The young man swallowed. His throat bobbed, lips parting and pressing shut again. Around them, the station was still in disarray—phones ringing, radios crackling, uniforms barking orders as papers fluttered to the floor. No one so much asglanced their way. And when Gordon looked back at Ash, it was with the air of someone yielding to a current stronger than himself. He nodded, barely audible. “Follow me.”
Relief washed over Ash, sharp and sudden. He trailed the morgue tech down a wide stairwell where the Art Deco grandeur gave way to institutional green, their footsteps echoing in the concrete shaft. The air grew colder with each step, thick with formaldehyde and industrial cleaner. Overhead bulbs burned too bright, harsh and utilitarian, nothing like the warm light of the lobby’s chandelier. They crossed a basement corridor lined with dark granite tiles, past a door marked MORGUE in chipped black letters, past another labeled EVIDENCE, until Gordon unlocked an unmarked office. The noise from above vanished behind them, swallowed by cinder block and silence.
“Technically, I don’t have clearance for this,” Gordon murmured, dropping into a chair and logging onto the terminal with quick, nervous hands. “But CMPD’s system is still running on fossils. You jiggle the right keys, and the doors will open.” His fingers moved in quick, practiced bursts, the screen blooming with menus and locked files. His ears had gone scarlet, his jaw clenched with focus, yet his eyes kept darting upward, unable to stop returning to Ash as though pulled on strings.
Ash leaned on the desk, watching the flicker of Gordon’s keystrokes.
“There,” Gordon whispered at last, pulling up Rick Slade’s personnel file. Lines of text scrolled across the monitor, stark and damning. Among the details glowed an address: 109 Talbot Lane, Thornefield. Apartment 14.
Ash fixed it in his mind, already straightening before Gordon could exit the screen. “Thanks, Gordon.”
He didn’t wait for excuses, or permission, or the nervous flutter of protest starting in Gordon’s throat. He was alreadymoving, boots hitting tile, pulse thudding with a single purpose: find Rick.
(12:26 a.m.)
Wind clawed at Ash’s hair as he tore through Brookheim’s streets, the bike an extension of his pulse. The city throbbed around him—neon signs burning in the mist, towers cutting jagged silhouettes against the night sky—but his focus had tunneled, singular. He leaned into the curves, exhaust snarling, chasing an instinct older than thought.
He skidded to a halt in front of Rick’s five-story building, tires squealing, the machine ticking down as the engine cooled. The place rose in weary brick and shadow, windows blind, the full moon painting every ledge in silver. Ash swung off the bike, boots slapping asphalt, heart thrumming too fast. He took the stairs two at a time, his palm sliding along the railing, until he reached number 14, the nameSladeetched across brass.
He hammered on it. Once. Twice. He didn’t give a fuck if he was asleep. “Rick!” His knuckles ached from the force, but the silence from inside the apartment pressed back harder. He tried again, louder, impatience bleeding into anger. “Rick, it’s me! Open the damn door!”
At first, nothing. Then—muffled sounds, a thud, a groan, the scrape of something metal. Rick’s voice was hoarse, strangled, almost inhuman. “Go away!”
The command only tightened the vise around Ash’s ribs. If Rick thought he could get rid of him that easily, he had another thing coming. Ash bent, slid the pick from his boot, and set to work. The pins resisted, stubborn as clenched teeth, each delicate scrape testing his nerves. He coaxed, adjusted, eased the pressure with practiced patience, and with a twist and click that felt like betrayal, the lock gave at last.
The apartment swallowed him in shadow and heat. The air pressed upon his lungs, tinged with sweat, copper, and a darker musk that prickled his skin and raised the hairs on his arms as he stepped further in. The place opened wide: kitchen, dining nook, and living room stitched together in one dim sprawl. A sofa slouched against the wall, a suit jacket tossed across its arm, blackened with something that looked like dried blood. Empty bottles and a pair of heavy shoes sat abandoned near the door, as if shed mid-stride. The counters were bare save for an ashtray crowded with butts, the ghost of smoke clinging to the air. Spartan, messy, more functional than welcoming. SoRick.
Ash’s pulse kicked harder as he pushed forward, following the narrow hall that led deeper. The bathroom door stood ajar at the end, and another hung open on the right. He nudged it wider, stepping into Rick’s bedroom. The space felt too warm, suffocating, blinds drawn but leaking thin stripes of moonlight across a king-sized bed left in disarray. Shadows clung to the corners, heavy with silence. And then his gaze landed on the large, writhing shape on the floor.
Rick was stripped bare, skin slick with sweat, muscles corded in strain. Steel cuffs bit into his wrists, chaining him to the radiator, his frame arched tight against the pull. His chest heaved in brutal jerks, each breath rasping out half-growl, half-groan, the sound animalistic and intimate all at once.
Ash froze in the doorway. “Rick?”
“Get out!” Rick’s shout pierced the gloom, guttural, threaded with something feral. His face was half-hidden in shadow, but his eyes caught the moonlight—bloodshot, glinting, not quite human anymore. “You’re not safe—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ash snapped, words half-cover for the way his heart was stuttering. Something was seriously wrong here. “What’s going on? Are you on drugs?”
Rick convulsed, shoulders bulging, spine bowing as though some invisible hand was twisting him apart. His teeth clattered, jaw clenched so hard the tendons stood out like ropes. “I’m a—ugh—a werewolf!”
Ash blinked and crossed his arms. “Wow. If you want to ghost me, fine. I’ve done it plenty of times, I’m sure I deserve it. But at least find an excuse that doesn’t sound completely fucking insane.”
The radiator rattled as Rick heaved against it, the iron pipes quaking under his bulk. Metal clanged, bolts straining as if the whole thing might rip from the wall. His body convulsed, muscles knotted into ropes before snapping taut, dragging him into a brutal curve. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl, and the sound that tore out of him was no longer human. “Run!”
Ash’s breath snagged in his throat. The terror in Rick’s voice wasn’t for show—he meant it. But Ash had heard junkies scream worse on bathroom floors, and none of them had sprouted fangs. He swallowed, forcing steel into his words. “Okay, big guy, you’re either going psycho or frying your brain, but either way, you need a fucking ambulance—”
Moonlight slashed past the blinds, a white blade cutting across Rick’s figure. Ash saw it then, in that stripe of light. The change was undeniable: dark hair spreading where there had been bare skin, fur crawling thick along his arms, shoulders, chest. His muscles, already formidable, swelled further, cords bunching and twisting until the cuffs bit deep and shrieked against the radiator. Nails lengthened into claws, gouging trenches in the carpet with each forceful jerk. His mouth opened wider than it should, canines jutting long and pale as knives.
Ash couldn’t move. Every instinct begged him to flee, but shock welded him to the spot. Rick, and yet not Rick, loomed before him, a hulking silhouette warped by fur and shadow. The face still carried an echo of the man, but his cheekbonesbristled with hair, features distorted in a grotesque mockery of humanity, teeth too long in a mouth twisted by feral hunger.
With a violent wrench, the handcuffs snapped. Whatever remained of Rick Slade drowned in the tide of change, leaving only a nightmare rising from the floor. The creature stood tall, bipedal yet monstrously wrong, shoulders heaving, claws flexing. It fixed him with a stare burning wild in the dark, savage, ruthless. The roar that followed shook the walls and rattled through Ash’s bones, a sound torn from the pits of hell.
“Oh shit,” Ash whispered—and bolted.
He barely made the doorway when a massive weight seized him from behind. Claws hooked into his jacket, yanking him off his feet and hauling him into the bedroom. He slammed into the wall, the impact knocking the breath from his chest. Before he could recover, the beast was on him, towering, unstoppable. One huge hand closed around his throat and drove him up the plaster. His heels scraped for purchase, legs kicking uselessly as his windpipe crushed under the grip. Both hands clamped around Rick’s wrist, straining with all his strength, but it was like trying to bend steel. His lungs burned, vision strobing white, and still those eyes blazed into him, merciless and unblinking, pinning him harder than the claws themselves.
“Rick…” He dragged sound past the vise at his throat, low, coaxing, a velvet murmur curling into the beast’s ear. “Rick, it’s me… It’s Ash.”
The hand pressed harder, cutting off breath, and Ash wondered if this was the last thing he’d ever say. Then—hesitation. The pressure faltered, not gone, but wavering, as though the werewolf couldn’t decide whether to tear him open or not. The monstrous face dipped toward his own. Hot breath, sharp with musk and copper, fanned his cheek. Fangs grazed his skin. A nose trailed along his jaw, sniffing, tasting. The grip shifted; unyielding, yet no longer a killing hold. A claiming one.
