(8:51 p.m.)
The streets had begun to gleam with drizzle. Ghostly haloes of yellow light wreathed around lamp poles and store signs, painting the city in molasses tones. The nights came quicker now, wrapping the buildings in damp satin, the fall air thick with salt and static. Ash’s bike coughed to life between his thighs, the engine purring like blasphemy. He rode without a helmet, hair snapping in the wind, the chill kissing his cheeks with every turn. Fogmere sprawled before him, roaring, restless, raw.
Jimmy’s building on Holloway Street hadn’t changed. Still the same cracked steps, still the rusted callbox no one used. Ash scaled the stairs by muscle memory, pausing at the third floor. A locked door was less of a barrier than a courtesy; his fingers knew how to speak to tumblers. They whispered now. A click, a hush, and he slipped inside. Street kids didn’t forget their tricks, even after they’d learned how to wear silk.
The apartment greeted him with the stale breath of absence. Dust motes swam in the spill of streetlight slanting through half-closed blinds. The kind of place that still echoed the shape ofits last inhabitant, even in silence. A cardigan draped across the back of a chair. An ashtray crowded with forgotten smokes. The faintest trace of cologne in the air, a memory clinging to bone.
Ash didn’t need to turn on the light. He let the dark guide him, his pupils wide, taking it all in—the mess, the stillness, the haunted quiet. He moved like vapor, his steps noiseless, as if the room were a shrine to the dead. Maybe it was.
An antique photo frame rested on the low shelf. Jimmy with a red-haired girl at some concert. Both happy and smiling, not knowing how little time was left. Ash brushed his gloved fingers over the glass, then pulled his phone out and took a picture.
The bedroom door stood ajar. The space beyond was dim and disheveled, a low-slung mattress strewn with tangled sheets and a single pillow dented by a vanished head. A mug sat abandoned on the desk in the corner, ringed with dried coffee. The air felt thick, unmoved for days, heavy with the taint of loneliness.
Ash scanned the room with a thief’s eye, not for valuables but for meaning. Most of it was garbage. Old books, open condom wrappers, crumpled gym flyers. There was nothing staged, nothing sacred. Just the ordinary chaos of a life interrupted. He rifled through drawers, half-expecting more junk—and paused. Nestled under a tangle of papers and charging cables was a navy-blue passport. He flipped it open and met the solemn gaze of a younger Jimmy, staring out from the photo like he hadn’t yet learned how ugly the world could get.James Cole. It was the first time Ash learned his full name; he never cared to ask before.
He tucked the passport back into the drawer and moved on, sifting through the shelves beside the bed: cheap paperbacks, dead houseplants, a dusty box of lube and batteries. A few canvases leaned against the wall, half-finished abstracts smeared with angry reds and sickly greens. On the nightstand, half-tucked beneath a dog-eared notebook, a sliver of glossypaper caught his eye. He slid it free—a handbill for a rave at the Inferno, the date stamped in gold foil: five nights ago.
He knew the place. Everyone did. Once a derelict shipping warehouse, the Inferno had been reborn as one of Duskhaven’s crown jewels, a sprawling, chrome-and-neon temple of dance and hedonism. Velvet ropes, imported sound systems, imported drugs. Its glass walls pulsed with light, its rooftop terrace overlooked the glittering curve of the Bellona River like a chalice held to the gods of excess. No cover, no rules. Just thudding bass, red flares, and a haze of narcotics thick enough to blur the lines between skin and soul. It was the kind of place you went to vanish into strobes and thrum, to lose your name on someone else’s tongue. He’d been there more times than he cared to admit, drawn by the heat, the rhythm, the beautiful bodies moving below the smoke and the lasers.
Ash’s thumb smoothed the crease as his gaze lingered. If Jimmy had gone there that night, it might’ve been the last time anyone saw him alive. And if the killer had followed him there, or found him in that maze of bodies and bass… then the Inferno was his next stop.
He put the flyer where he found it and left the apartment without looking back. No point in lingering. Whatever had happened to him, Jimmy wasn’t coming back to explain it. Now came the hard part: pulling threads in the dark, trying to make sense of a young man’s last days and the shadow that swallowed him. But Ash had always known—answers never came gift-wrapped. You had to chase them through the smoke, the noise, the blood.
And so he would.
Chapter Fourteen
(11:11 p.m.)
The bar was half-empty, steeped in gloom and saxophone. Rick slipped in, collar up, hat low, the smell of the city clinging to his coat. Calgrave’s damp breath had followed him inside, twisting around the dark wood and liquor haze like a bad habit. The place was dim, more shadow than light, and smelled of old varnish, nicotine, and things that had long settled into the cracks. That suited him fine. He didn’t belong anywhere clean tonight.
The bartender—a gaunt man with half-lidded eyes and a face like a graveyard—poured his scotch without questions. No chit-chat, no smiles. Just silence and booze. That, too, suited him fine.
He took the drink and retreated to a corner booth where the shadows were thick and the light barely touched. It was quiet there, the music bleeding from the bar: brushed cymbals, dusky trumpet, a tune of melancholic dreams. A sconce above him sputtered like a dying star, its gold glow just enough to keep him in half-darkness. He sat with his back to the wall, lit a cigarette with a hiss of the match, and let the smoke twist around his face. Drink in hand, eyes on the door.
Waiting. He hated this part.
Calling in favors was always a messy business, but this one sat worse than most. He’d burned his last good lead on the case this morning when he released their only suspect, and what little forensics had come back was just noise. Frank had wanted to come along tonight, insisted on it, even after Rick told him who—what—the contact was. Rick had to lie that the rendezvous fell through at the last minute to get rid of him. A coward’s move,perhaps. But he’d seen what Schreck’s presence did to people who didn’t know how to look away. Better Frank stayed clean.
Rick dragged deep on the cigarette and let it burn in his lungs. He was tired. Bone-tired. The kind that sleep doesn’t fix. He’d been chasing ghosts and shadows so long he’d forgotten what real felt like. Since this morning, he’d filed three reports, dodged two phone calls from the DA’s office, run background checks on a pair of witnesses who didn’t exist, and managed not to crash his car while tailing a suspect he had no legal right to follow.
A dark-haired boy with a sinner’s smile and a martyr’s grace.
Rick exhaled smoke, slow and bitter. The kid was wistful, treacherous, magnetic in ways Rick couldn’t name and didn’t want to. Either he was really innocent—or a very practiced liar. But the part of him that wanted Ash to be innocent was dangerous. It made him sloppy. It made him human. And in this business, humanity could kill you quicker than any bullet.
Yet he kept seeing him. In flashes. The lazy sprawl in the passenger seat. The way his eyes had flicked over Rick like a dare. The way he’d saiddetective, drawled it, like a private joke that only one of them was in on. His scent still stuck in Rick’s nostrils, faint and feral, a fading memory of something unattainable, forbidden.
He rolled the scotch on his tongue and stared into the glass like it might scry answers. The liquor felt good going down. Grounding. Maybe that was why he was here. Maybe it wasn’t. The truth was, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Not after burning every bridge short of necromancy. And not with what he was. There weren’t many sources left who would take his calls, let alone meet him face-to-face. Most of the city’s dark underworld wanted nothing to do with lycans, especially ones in uniform. Maximilian Schreck was his last option.
Rick ground out his cigarette and eyed the door again. Nothing. The same mournful jazz hummed on. The bartender glanced his way once, then looked away. Only the shadows seemed to inch closer. He checked his watch—half past eleven. The bastard was late.
Then, suddenly, the air changed. Just the faintest prickle at the base of his neck. The temperature seemed to drop, as though a door had opened somewhere deep below the earth, letting winter seep through. Something had arrived, crawling beneath the surface of things, more absence than presence. A hush fell; the room holding its breath in silent anticipation. Rick’s gaze lifted as the stench came a moment before the body: grave-earth, damp mildew, dried roses rotting in a crypt, sweet and foul at once.
The thing that slid into the booth across from him didn’t make a sound; a ripple in the dark more than a man. “Slade,” the voice rasped, a moth brushing against dry silk. “You must be desperate. Seeking my help.”
Max Schreck looked even worse than Rick remembered. Not older—he never aged—but worn thin, like a photograph that had been left in the rain. His black coat was long and dust-caked, buttoned to the throat, and the wide-brimmed hat cast most of his face in shadow. What little skin was visible had the brittle pallor of candle wax, taut over sharp bones. His eyes caught the dim light, reflecting it with the cold, liquid gleam of a nocturnal predator.
Rick took another sip, unblinking. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
