Chapter 1
Knock, knock, knock.
The noise woke her.
“Housekeeping,” a voice called.
Rebecca’s stomach lurched as her consciousness fell into place then slipped away again. Cold tile against her back and shoulders. Something hard against the side of her head, hurting now, as if it had been pressed there a long time. She forced her eyes open.
Blood, everywhere.
She couldn’t focus, but she could see the red well enough. A sickly ball of gas bubbled up from her belly, into her throat, then bile filled her mouth. She coughed it out, red sputum, letting it spill down her chin and onto her chest. The toilet bowl right beside her, her head propped against the side of the cistern. The water nearly black.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
Ringed fingers on wood.
“Good morning, hello, housekeeping.”
A woman’s voice, cracked and heavily accented, sing-songing the words as if she’d called them out a thousand times before.
Rebecca saw the man opposite her, slumped against the bathtub. Legs outstretched as if reaching to her, hands loose in his lap. His head against the side of the bath, his neck at an unnatural angle. The gash beneath his jawline. His clothes soaked red.
Fragments of mirror lay scattered over the floor, the largest of them coated in blood. Rebecca looked down at her right palm, the memory of pain there. A wound not long healed. Another phantom ache at the back of her head.
An image flashed in her mind: the man, looming over her, her throat in his hand. Him pushing her head back again and again, smashing it into the mirror over the sink. The rage in his eyes, his teeth grinding together, spit at the corners of his mouth. Then his face went loose, his eyes and mouth wide with shock. The mirror shard embedded in the folds beneath his chin, hot blood cascading over Rebecca’s wrist.
The urge to vomit came upon her. Her jaw dropped as she breathed deep through her mouth, fighting to hold back whatever her stomach wanted to expel.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
Two voices now, speaking to each other in Spanish.
They’ll come in, Rebecca thought. They’ll come in and find me here with him. Get up. Get up now.
She braced her forearm against the toilet seat and got her bare feet under her, pushing up, but they slipped on the blood-wet tiles. The rear of Rebecca’s head cracked against the wall, and a cry escaped her.
The voices outside were silent for a moment before one called, “Hello? You okay? Housekeeping. We come in, okay?”
Rebecca spilled forward onto her hands and knees, her palms splashing in the red. She crawled to the bathroom door and through. Bright burning sunlight cutting through the gaps between the curtains, illuminating a cheap motel room of which she had no memory. She reached the bed and rested her forearms on it, used it to push herself upright.
“We come in,” the voice called from the other side of the door.
No, Rebecca tried to say as she staggered around the bed, but it was little more than a hoarse bubbling in her throat. An electronic beep, and the lock’s tumblers whirred and clunked. No, she said as she stumbled toward the door, but still her voice deserted her. As the door began to open inward, Rebecca lunged at it, her hands and chest slamming into the wood, pushing the door closed.
Spanish words hissed on the other side, curses Rebecca didn’t understand.
“No,” she said, finding her voice buried deep in her chest.
“Housekeeping,” the voice replied.
“Not today.”
“You need towels? Toilet paper?”
“No,” Rebecca said. “No. Por favor. No mol . . . no molest . . .”
“Okay,” the voice replied. “No molestar, do not disturb, okay. There’s a sign. You put it on the door, we don’t knock, okay?”
The two voices again, muttering, whispering. Rebecca brought her eye to the peephole but could only keep it there a moment, the brutal light too hard to endure. In that moment, she saw an older woman and a younger girl, both in pink uniforms, a trolley laden with towels, toilet paper, cleaning materials. Rebecca closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the door, heard the trolley squeak and rattle as they rolled it away, their voices low and sour with anger.
“I would’ve killed you,” she whispered. “If you’d come in, I would’ve killed you.”
Wouldn’t be the first. Wouldn’t be the last.
Rebecca pushed herself away from the door and toward the bed. Fell face down into the bunched-up comforter. So tired. Every shred of her being cried out for sleep. It had been days since she’d found rest. Last night, she remembered almost none of it, but she had slept. And she wanted more. She desired the numb darkness, the dreamless black.
But that man.
The man in the cheap suit, the one whose rental car had pulled up alongside her on the street last night and asked her: How much? She had not answered. He had asked her again, leaning down and peering up at her through the passenger window. He had asked once more: How much?
Again, Rebecca didn’t answer. He had reached over and opened the passenger door, said, Get in, think about it while we drive.
Without conscious decision, Rebecca had done as she was told.
She pulled the passenger door closed.
“What are you on?”
Rebecca looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. His pudgy face, his thick middle. All those broken capillaries on his nose and cheeks, glowing bright red like neon signs.
“Meth? Ketamine? I got some stuff back at my motel, if that’s what you want. Or cash money, if that works.”
Rebecca studied him. His gray suit, his fat knuckles, the sheen on his forehead. The low, earthy smell of him, like long-fallen leaves and bitter sweat.
“How much?” he asked.
“How much what?” Rebecca said.
“You know, how much? I can give you cash, or I got some supplies back at my motel. What do you want?”
Rebecca looked straight ahead, through the windshield to the street beyond. All the other women in their short skirts and low necklines, standing in groups of three or four, heads together, sharing secrets and cigarettes. She wondered for a moment why he had chosen her over them. Because she looked the most desperate and wretched of all these women. Some men like that. The desperation calls to them, sings to their cruelty.
“What?” the man asked.
Rebecca looked at him, this sad and needful creature whose life she would surely take.
She said, “I’m hungry.”
Chapter 2
Moonflower ran. The pack keeping pace, panting hard, paws drumming on the dirt.
Two coyotes, a Patterdale terrier, and two mutts. Even though his legs were shorter, the little terrier was the fastest of them all, weaving through the scrub like a black missile. The two mongrels scampered after, the taller of them jumping the low bushes, the smaller ducking between them. The coyotes held back, both females, still wary. But they belonged to Moonflower, no question. They would die for her.
Moonflower came to a halt and looked up at the endless expanse of sky. Stars already prickling the deep blue blanket of the new-born night. The pack did as she did. Scant wisps of cloud skated the heavens above as wind climbed the mountain, tearing the evening scents away before she could grasp them. Hunger had wrung her stomach to a dry ball of pain. The mountain scrub glowered all around. How many days and nights? Moonflower had lost count. She was alone now, that much was certain, except for the voice that had been whispering in her ear.
Low and insistent, the voice seemed to speak from somewhere just inside, as if some tiny creature had nested next to her eardrum and spoke to her in the quietest moments, or when she lingered in the strange limbo between sleep and waking. This morning, back in the cave where she had taken shelter, when her mind kaleidoscoped between the real and unreal, the voice had whispered to her that she should take one of the dogs.
They were so devoted to her that they would offer themselves gladly, lie on their backs with their bellies and throats exposed, and allow her to rip them open and feast. They would welcome it, the voice said.
“Liar,” Moonflower had said aloud in the dark, causing the dogs to stir around her.
Yes, they loved her, and yes, they would give her anything she wanted, but she would not take it from them.
The Patterdale—Sweeney, she called him, after the villainous barber in a book she’d read—stood erect and sniffed at the air, then gave a stream of yips.
“You smell something?” Moonflower asked.
Sweeney gave her one look before rocketing off through the scrub. Moonflower paused for breath then sprinted after him. The rest thrummed behind, panting, paws beating dirt. She giggled. Despite the aching sadness, the thrill of sprinting through the moonlit scrub brought a shining joy to her heart.
She wondered what scent had caught Sweeney’s attention. Out of all of them, his nose was the keenest. Even sharper than hers. In the few days he’d been part of her pack, Moonflower had learned to trust his lead. Now she followed him up a rising slope, steeper and steeper, her tattered sneakers dislodging grit and gravel, robbing her of momentum. The others passed her, the two mongrels, John and Yoko, she called them. A boy and a girl, bonded so tightly to each other that they could barely be separated.
Then the coyotes—she had no names for them yet—keeping a cautious distance. It was the other dogs who should be scared of them. Moonflower had heard of coyotes playing with domestic dogs to lure them away from their homes, but these two feared her too much to harm her friends.
The dogs all paused on the crest of the slope. All except Sweeney, who barreled on and down the other side, yip-yip-yipping as he went.
Too late, Moonflower found the scent on the rushing desert air, and her stomach rolled and growled in response. Not the blood of a wounded animal, not even the scat of a rabbit or a deer. This was a more subtle smell. Flesh, not alive, but not rotten. Clean butchered meat, ready for cooking. And above it all, the acrid sting of burning charcoal.
Copyright © 2025 by Stuart Neville. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
