The sharp, absolute finality of his words hung suspended in the warm, pine-scented air.
"I will not."
Erin Volter stood frozen on the carpet of dark, damp moss, her piercing green eyes wide with a volatile mixture of utter disbelief, shock, and rising fury. Her chest heaved violently against the torn collar of her coat. She had sacrificed her entire career, committed treason against the National Exterminator Agency, stowed away in freezing cargo holds, and leaped blind into a dimensional tear leading to the origin world of monsters. She had done all of it to find answers. She had expectantly believed that logic governed the universe.
