The storm hit like it meant to peel the skin off the tower. It came from out of nowhere, in the middle of the night... just like a novel.

Ice pellets hissed against the glass; wind bullied the frame into a steady shudder. Zubair called it before anyone asked. "No one out." He drew the curtains to kill the flicker and cut their reflections to a faint smear.

They settled into a trapped rhythm. Stove hot. Rope on the table. Knives out for maintenance. Elias opened his notebook and stared at a blank line he didn’t fill. Sera sat near the heat, knees up, the greenhouse casting a wash of green across her face that nobody mentioned.

The building gave one long creak. Then another.

"Just the wind," Lachlan muttered, mostly to himself.

A new sound threaded through the room—soft at first. A wet slap. Pause. Another. Like heavy fabric being dragged one step at a time. It came from below the floor, not under the ice. In the stairwell.

Zubair went still. The knife on his thigh stopped tapping.

"Duct?" Elias offered too fast.

"It has weight," Zubair countered, already moving for the landing door. He pressed his palm to the frame. Vibration came through his bones. Not skitter. Drag. Steady.

There was another slap. Then a sharp scrape, rubbered flesh catching concrete. Closer this time.

Alexei stood, his knives already sliding back into their sheaths because steel wouldn’t help if the problem was a leak or a break in the seam. He took the door with one shoulder when Sera eased the latch. The draft slapped their shins.

"Listen," Zubair breathed.

The stairwell breathed with them. Slap. Drag. Pant. Slap. Drag. Louder, higher up now. A wet, panicked sound that grated on nerves.

A soft bark, like a wounded dog that was trying to keep quiet.

"It’s a seal," Elias said, surprise flattening his voice. "It’s hauling itself up the flights."

"How is that—" Lachlan stopped. The next drag answered him. It was here whether it made sense or not.

"Positions," Zubair ordered. "Alexei on door. Sera on seal. Lachlan line. Elias kit."

"Kit?" Elias echoed, already reaching for gauze and tape because that word meant blood.

The thing hit the landing one floor down. A heavy body thumped into the door below. It yelped—high, ugly, wrong for an animal that big.

Panic did that to throats. The slap-drag started again. Up.

Zubair put two fingers up. Wait.

The sound punched into their landing like a thrown sack. Then it was at the door—wet breath pushing under the seam, a choked bark. Sera flicked the latch and Alexei took the weight in one sweep, giving it a wedge, not an opening.

The seal jammed its head through hard enough to smear blood along the frame. It was bigger than the doorway wanted to allow in, but terror made it shape itself into whatever space existed.

Blubber slid. Nails raked the engineered hard wood floors as they dug in as deep as they could.

It forced itself past Alexei’s hip, knocking him back a step, and flopped into the open living room with the shock of a fallen body that suddenly had nowhere to climb.

It wasn’t just bleeding. It was leaking—fat and red mixing into a pink smear that turned the floor lethal. Its eyes were round with the fear that makes anything stupid. It scrabbled toward the stove and banged its skull on the cabinet with a thud.

"Close," Zubair snapped.

Alexei tried. The seal heaved and caught the door with its hind body like a doorstop made of meat. The slab refused to seal.

"Move it," Zubair barked.

Sera dropped to a knee without hesitation, hands to the ribbed side, found purchase where no one else would. Her grip wasn’t gentle.

She shifted the mass three inches; Alexei yanked the door those same inches, enough to crack the hinge and then bring it back under control.

"Hold," Zubair ordered.

They didn’t get the luxury.

Something hit the stairwell below like an anvil in a sack.

The impact traveled through the concrete, up the studs, into teeth. The seal thrashed, moaned, slapped its body again, panicked beyond thinking. Breath roared under the landing door as if something large had inhaled the floor.

Alexei’s grin died. "That is not friend," he muttered, his accent getting heavier.

Another thud. A scrape like claws taking purchase on concrete. The stairwell darkened through the narrow wired-glass pane as something huge took the turn on the landing below. The smell arrived a second later—rank musk and sweet rot, edged with cold.

"Door," Zubair clipped. "We don’t let it learn the hinge."

Sera shoved the seal again, this time with a noise that wasn’t human in the back of her throat. The animal slid across blood and tile; Alexei slammed the slab into the frame. The latch caught; the bolt bit.

The thing on the other side put its weight to the door.

Everything in the room pushed back at once.

Zubair braced the frame. Alexei jammed a shoulder into the slab. Lachlan threw his forearms against the panel and dug his boots into pink grease. Elias wedged his kit case between the bottom of the door and the floor, a stupid act that felt better than not doing it.

For one long second the door breathed inward like a living thing. Wood complained. The hinge knocked twice in the way that meant someone had asked it to do more than it wanted.

"Guns," Zubair decided, voice flat as a hammer. "The door won’t hold." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

They weren’t ready for a siege. Not at their front door, anyway.

Alexei’s shoulder stayed in the slab while his other hand found the pistol under the couch. Zubair didn’t let go of the frame when Lachlan slapped a rifle into his free hand. Elias had to throw his kit aside to scramble for the short barrel under the shelf. Sera didn’t reach for anything. She stood in the center of the room, her eyes black under her contacts as she continued to stare at the entrance.

There was a predator outside in the hall.

There was a predator inside the penthouse.

Now, it was only a matter of time before they figured out which predator was stronger.