“Questions?”Elias’s gaze swept over us, lingering on my burned hand, still healing slowly from the oath ritual.
“The warehouse,” Desiderius said carefully.“Will it be empty except for the coven?”
“Intelligence confirms they gather at dusk for their blasphemous rituals.You’ll leave just as darkness falls completely.Make haste, for we must catch the witches in the act.We cannot allow them to finish their rituals and leave before we complete our mission.”Elias rolled up the map with deliberate slowness.“And know this—your performance will be observed and evaluated.You are not to show mercy; you are agents of divine wrath.”
My stomach clenched.Agents of “divine wrath.”Of course we were.
“Dismissed,” Elias commanded.“You leave in one hour.Separately.Different routes to avoid drawing attention.You’ll be given precise instructions upon departure.”
RedHookmightaswell have been in another country for how long it took to reach.I wound through the surface streets, passing dockworkers trudging home, their necks pulsing with each heartbeat.My mouth flooded with saliva, fangs pressing against my gums.Last night’s feeding should have sustained me, yet hunger clawed at my insides again.Without the Host, I felt myself slipping into the very monster the Order hunted—consumed by appetite.
The Sinclair warehouse crouched at the water’s edge, a hulking ruin against the darkening sky.Its eastern façade wore the blackened scars of some past fire, while shattered panes stared sightlessly toward the harbor.The loading bay gaped open, its metal doors wrenched sideways on corroded tracks.I couldn’t have designed a more perfect stage for the spectacle of righteous destruction the Order demanded.
Desiderius stepped out of the shadows across the street, his arrival timed precisely as planned.We didn’t acknowledge each other.
I approached the loading dock, no longer trying to mask my presence.Let them see.Let them witness my dedication to their cause.The rusted chains securing the doors might have stopped a human.I grabbed them with both hands and pulled, metal shrieking as links designed to hold tons of cargo snapped like thread.The chains fell away in a cascade of rust and broken metal.
The doors themselves came next.I gripped the edge of one and wrenched it from its tracks entirely, the steel folding under my fingers like paper.I hurled it aside with enough force to embed it in the warehouse’s brick wall, mortar exploding outward in a cloud of dust.
Inside, darkness thick as tar.But darkness had become my element.I could see everything—the abandoned machinery draped in cobwebs, the puddles of stagnant water reflecting nothing, the narrow stairs leading to the warehouse’s upper level where candlelight flickered behind dirty glass.
I made noise.Tremendous noise.I grabbed a rusted conveyor belt and ripped it from its moorings, metal screaming in protest as bolts sheared from concrete.I threw industrial shelving units aside, their contents—moldering boxes, rat-eaten ledgers—exploding across the floor.All performance, all theater to keep our observers fixed on me, to give Desiderius a chance to do what he must.
Above me, panicked voices.Female, young, terrified.
A flash of movement in my peripheral vision—Desiderius, moving faster than any human could properly observe, flowing up the stairs like smoke.I continued my rampage below, demolishing everything in reach, creating such a cacophony that no one could hear what transpired above.
I found an old engine block, probably from the warehouse’s working days, and lifted it overhead.The weight that would have crushed a human felt like nothing in my grip.I hurled it through the floor above, wood splintering, creating a hole large enough to see through.More screams from above—genuine terror.
Through the hole, I glimpsed Desiderius among them.Five women, just as Matthias had described—the tall redhead trying to shield the others, the Caribbean sisters clutching each other, the blonde teenager pressing herself into a corner.Desiderius moved between them faster than thought, his hands finding temples, eyes, foreheads.Each touch lasted only seconds, but I saw the women’s expressions shift from terror to something else—blankness, then fresh horror as he poured new memories into their minds.
I wasn’t sure what he’d shown them, but one by one, using his vampiric speed, he slipped them out a window—somehow scaling the side of the building to retrieve the next, then the next.
Somehow, I supposed, he’d also moved the corpses into place—but I couldn’t confirm it; I didn’t have a good view.
Then I heard it.Footsteps outside.Deliberate, cautious.Not the random wandering of a vagrant but the measured approach of someone expecting trouble.
“Company,” I whispered, though Desiderius had doubtless heard it too.Through a gap in the wall, I glimpsed Brother Timothy, one of Marcus’s senior observers.Stake in hand, moving toward the rear entrance.
No time for delicacy.Desiderius abandoned subtlety, moving at full supernatural speed to drag the remaining bodies inside.He wasn’t done.If Timothy caught him...
I grabbed one of the warehouse’s support beams—thick as a tree trunk, holding up what remained of the second floor—and pulled.Wood older than I’d been when alive splintered with a sound like breaking bones.The floor above tilted crazily, sending debris cascading down in an avalanche of dust and rotted timber.
“What in God’s name—“ Timothy’s voice from the doorway.
I hurried into the room where Desiderius was working, and we were supposed to slaughter them.Desiderius had arranged the bodies in a rough circle as though they’d been conducting some ritual when death found them.The Caribbean sisters’ substitutes were close enough in appearance.
The sight of it—the casual brutality, even to the already dead—made my stomach revolt.This is necessary, I told myself.These women are already gone, and their defilement saves the living.
“Make it look real,” Desiderius commanded me.“The blood.”
The blood.Of course.A massacre without blood would raise questions we couldn’t answer.
I bit into my wrist, fangs piercing dead flesh that still somehow bled.The pain was distant, unimportant compared to what came next.I let my blood drip onto the corpses, then smeared it across their throats, their chests, mimicking the tears my fangs would have left if I’d actually fed on them.My hands became slick with it, the copper scent filling the warehouse, making the scene reek of fresh carnage rather than day-old death.
Desiderius did the same, and soon the arranged bodies looked like victims of vampiric feeding—throats torn, blood pooling beneath them in dark mirrors.The tableau we created was grotesque, a mockery of death that should have made me weep.
Timothy’s footsteps on the stairs indicated his impending arrival.
