New chapter!
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Millions of symbiotes had made landfall on Earth.
Spread them thin enough and they became hard to find, but every major city should still have had a few.
San Francisco was where it had all started.
If any place should have been crawling with them, it was this city.
Evan had gone three days without finding a single one.
Now three had walked through the same door at once.
‘Lucky me.’
“Lucky my ass,” Evan muttered under his breath.
“Can you even handle three of them?”
Venom had been badly wounded.
He could still deal with ordinary people, but another symbiote was already a risk.
Three at once was a problem.
“Right,” Venom said, suddenly less delighted.
“Forgot about the whole dying thing.
We’re not exactly at full murder capacity.”
Evan stayed hidden behind the shelves and watched the men through the gaps.
All three stood well over six feet.
The biggest was built like a linebacker, with arms thicker than Evan’s thighs.
Evan, meanwhile, looked like exactly what he was pretending to be: a thin, underfed teenager.
Five-seven on a good day.
Too much bone, not enough weight, and nowhere near enough muscle to make this fair.
Three symbiotes on one side.
One dying symbiote and one desperate host on the other.
No angle made that look winnable.
“Maybe we skip this?” Venom said inside his head.
“Find another snack?”
Evan narrowed his eyes.
His teeth pressed into his lower lip hard enough to sting.
“Find another one?
There are millions of them, sure, but Earth has billions of people.
Once they scatter, finding one is still a nightmare.
We found three.
We don’t let them walk.
And you’re running out of time.
If we die either way, we might as well gamble big.”
There was something wild and stubborn in his voice, enough that Venom went quiet for half a second.
“Look at you,” the symbiote said, pleased.
“Tiny human.
Bigger death wish than me.
I like it.”
Evan ignored him and tracked the three men.
They were heading straight for the chocolate aisle.
Same reason he had come in: quick calories.
He slipped toward the back shelves, where the store kept cheap tools and household supplies.
Hammers, wire, plastic tarps, rope, shovels, even a small chainsaw.
His gaze moved from the chainsaw to the shovel.
“Chainsaw makes noise.
Shovel is cleaner.”
He grabbed it, settled beside the shelf, and listened to the footsteps coming closer.
“Venom,” he asked silently, “how long does it take you to devour a symbiote?
Can you do it without killing the host first?”
“If they can’t fight back, yes,” Venom said, already hungry again.
“Give me one helpless body and I can eat fast.
If your stomach can handle it, I can take a bite big enough to solve most of our problems.”
Evan’s expression went cold.
The corner of his mouth lifted, and his grip tightened around the shovel handle.
He listened.
Three.
Two.
One.
Now.
“You picked the wrong store.”
He swung.
The shovel came down with a heavy metallic crack.
The impact ran up his arms, and one of the white men dropped like his strings had been cut.
“Venom.
Now.”
“Nice.”
Black slime surged over Evan’s skin.
In a blink, the filthy teenager was gone.
Something huge, black, ridiculous, and horrifying stood in his place.
White teeth peeled out of a monstrous grin.
The mouth opened wider than any mouth had a right to open, then lunged for the man sprawled on the floor.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.