Frank glared at him. “Then why does everyone near him wind up dead?”
The question hit like a fist to the sternum. Rick felt something give inside, but said nothing.
“You don’t even sound sure,” Frank added, softer now. “Look—I get it. He’s a knockout, and he’s got his hooks in you. You’re not thinking straight. But I’m your partner, Rick. I’ve got your back. Always have. Just… don’t let this blow up in your face.”
Rick’s nod was slow, almost reluctant. “I won’t.”
They stayed there in silence, saying nothing more. Just two tired men watching the rain smear the city beyond the glass, wondering how long before the next body turned up. And they were no closer to stopping it.
Rick stared at the window when his phone chimed, a single note that cut through the silence like a scalpel. He slid it from his pocket, thumb swiping across the screen. It was Schreck.
About goddamn time.
The vampire’s message was short, perfunctory:
‘Tomorrow, 10 p.m. Hyde Cemetery.’
Rick’s gaze flicked to Frank, who was moving toward the desk to grab his coffee, muttering something to himself. He said nothing, slipping the phone into his pocket as if it had never rung at all.
If Schreck was true to his word, which was a gamble in itself, Rick would get some info on the symbol at last—hell, maybe even the killings. But there was no such thing as a favor from a vampire without a price, and meeting in a cemetery at night felt like an invitation to dig his own grave. Rick wasn’t naive enough to believe in easy trades. Not in Calgrave. Yet right now, he’d take whatever light leaked through the seams and hope it would make a difference.
And this one… this one he’d follow alone.
{ VI }
Thursday, October 26
Chapter Thirty-One
(10:18 a.m.)
He moved across the floor, candlelight flickering along damp walls, and studied the boy bound to the X-shaped cross—naked, trembling, eyes wide with terror. Beautiful. A sharp thrill washed over him, a hunger not sexual but reverent. The boy’s breath came in ragged sobs that shivered against the stone.
Hands came into view, gloved in sterile blue, only they weren’t his. He unwrapped a checkered scarf from his throat, stark black and white, and laid it on the table among a spread of gleaming scalpels and other surgical instruments before picking one up. Its weight was familiar, intimate, the touch of an old lover.
The blade met flesh with a tender resistance before giving way. Blood welled hot and slick over his fingers. The boy’s scream broke, strangled into a gurgle, and he leaned closer, drinking in the sound like a sacrament. The face peeled away in his fingers, a mask coming loose, the boy’s features dissolving into raw, glistening meat. He felt the texture, the heat, the awful closeness of it—and beneath it all, satisfaction. Completion.Rightness.
Ash tore out of the dream with a gasp, bile rising in his throat. Sweat slicked him, cold enough to raise gooseflesh. The loft swayed around him, pale morning light leaking through the blinds in long white stripes.
He stumbled to the bathroom and retched into the sink, dry heaving until his chest ached. The nightmare clung to him like a wet cloth. He gripped the porcelain, staring at his reflection in the mirror—hishands,hisface—but the separation seemedpaper-thin, as if he could slip back into that other body with the wrong blink.
He turned on the tap and splashed cold water over his face, scrubbing as if to scour the memory off his skin. But the images pressed in: the knife’s weight, the warmth of blood, the boy’s final gasp. And worst of all, that flicker of pleasure, that dark, hungry satisfaction too vivid to be a mirage.
He staggered back to the bed, legs unsteady, lungs tight, and reached for his phone on the nightstand, desperate for something real, something to anchor him. The screen lit him in ghost-blue light. No new messages. No missed calls. The empty space where a name should have been hit harder than the nightmare.
He tossed the phone aside, jaw tightening. Fury and fear tangled until he couldn’t tell them apart. He didn’t want to stay here, boxed in with the dream’s oily residue crawling under his skin. The walls seemed too close, the air too stale, as if the silence had teeth and was ready to bite. He needed movement, something to scrape this feeling off, to shake the vision loose before it burrowed deeper and made itself a home.
(10:36 a.m.)
The air outside was raw, the kind of cold that clawed its way down his throat and settled in his chest. Ash kept his head low, hoodie drawn tight, walking the short stretch down the block to the gym. The dream replayed in splintered flashes with every step—the stone chamber, the bloodied scalpel, that wet scream—a scene caught in the teeth of his mind.
He pushed past the gym’s swinging door, the familiar smell closing around him: sweat ground into rubber mats, the tang of disinfectant fighting a losing war. At this hour, the place was quiet, the emptiness amplifying every sound, making it more personal—the scuff of his sneakers, the metallic clank of plates,the faint groan of a bench under strain. He dropped his bag in the locker room, shed his street clothes, and tugged on his workout gear, tension thrumming under his skin.
He eased into the workout without ceremony. Bench press until his shoulders burned and the fire spread in his arms. Hanging leg raises, every lift tightening the core, leaving him trembling under strain. Squats, slow and practiced, each rise tugging at the knots in his hamstrings, each drop sending a dull shock up his spine. Muscle-ups until his grip faltered, sweat stinging the raw places.
Then the punching bag.
He wrapped his fists, slid into a stance, and began. Jab. Cross. Hook. High kick. Again. Harder. Faster. The chain groaned above with each blow, the bag lurching under the force. Sweat poured down his back, pooling in the waistband of his shorts, soaking through the thin nylon. He drove his shin into the leather until it shuddered, until his breath came ragged and wet in his throat.
