Cold fury coils in my chest, the controlled kind that builds cases instead of destroying them. "The children from Cork. A dozen of them, disappeared months ago. Where did they go?"
Anya's face goes ashen. "You know about Cork?"
"I found evidence of the shipment in the manifests I've been tracking. Young children, all under ten years old. The trail went cold at the Eastern European border." Leaning forward slightly, I press the question. "Where are they, Anya?"
"Facility Seventeen. In the Carpathian Mountains." Her fingers clench into white-knuckled fists. "It's where they take children who show strong supernatural abilities before puberty. They... they try to amplify the gifts before the first shift. Create soldiers who are more powerful than natural shifters."
The words hit like ice water. "Wait. Those children were supernatural? All of them?"
"Yes." Anya's voice drops even lower. "Zharkov doesn't waste resources on human children. He targets the ones who show signs early. Unusual strength. Strange coincidences. Little things that mark them as different before they even know what they are."
Declan moves closer from where he's been standing near the door. "Most shifters don't present abilities until puberty. How does he identify them that young?"
My mind races through the implications. If Zharkov has a system for finding supernatural children this young, how many has he taken over the years?
"He has people. Scouts." Anya's hands shake. "They watch families with supernatural bloodlines. Track births. Monitor communities. Some children manifest small things early. A wolfpup who's too fast. A bear cub who's too strong. He takes them before the first shift, while they're still malleable. Easier to break and reshape."
"How many children survive the process?"
"Maybe a handful out of every group they process."
Most of the children are dead or dying in some remote facility, experimented on like lab rats because they were born with gifts the syndicate wants to weaponize. Nausea rises in my throat, followed by rage, followed by the helplessness threatening to drown my focus.
Emotion won't save those children, but evidence will.
"I need locations. Names. Anyone in the syndicate hierarchy who might have documentation about Facility Seventeen."
"Zharkov oversees it personally." Anya's voice drops to a whisper. "He visits every few months to review progress. He's obsessed with creating the perfect supernatural soldier. They say when he began it was to help supernaturals, but his obsession twisted him. Some of the older shifters, those who have survived, say he was conducting experiments during the Second World War. But he's been refining his techniques for centuries."
Centuries of refining techniques. Centuries of victims. My mind catches on the WWII reference, and something clicks into place with sickening clarity. "The Nazi eagle. It wasn't an eagle at all, was it? It was a phoenix."
Anya's face goes even paler. "You know."
"I'm starting to." The implications sprawl outward in too many directions to process at once. A phoenix-shifter embedded with the Nazi regime, experimenting on people under the guise of their twisted ideology. Creating his perfect supernatural soldiers while the world burned around him.
"He is." Anya holds my stare directly for the first time. "Phoenix. That's what they say. Fire and ash. Nearly impossible to kill because he just regenerates."
A phoenix. Finn's reaction when I mentioned Zharkov makes brutal sense now. The rage that flickered behind his eyes. The careful way he's avoided every question about his past with the syndicate leader. Dragon-fire could be the only thing hot enough to kill a phoenix. The pieces slam together with brutal clarity.
"Thank you, Anya." Standing, I offer her my hand. She takes it hesitantly. "You're under the brotherhood's protection now. Nobody from the syndicate touches you again."
Declan steps forward, his presence commanding but not threatening. "You're a wolfshifter. If you choose, you can become part of my pack at Wolfstone Abbey. A home. A family. Not all of us had choices about what we became, but we all get to choose what comes next."
Anya's eyes fill with tears again, but these look different from before. Less hopeless. "I can choose?"
"You can choose." Declan's voice gentles. "No pressure. No obligation. But the offer stands."
She nods. Brief hope crosses her face before fading.
I head outside where my phone might actually get a signal strong enough for an international call.
The sun has climbed high enough now that dragon-fire won't raise questions from the village. The clearing reeks of smoke and death. Finn turns another body to ash, dragon-fire reducing flesh and bone with brutal efficiency. He doesn't look up as I pass, focused entirely on the destruction he's creating.
I'll deal with him next. First, I need information from someone with access to European law enforcement databases.
My phone finally gets a decent signal out here, away from the cottage's thick stone walls. Jamie Buchanan was my partner back in Glasgow before I took the chief position in Stormhaven. He moved to Interpol shortly after, which means he has access to databases and intelligence networks I can't touch from a small Hebridean police station. I pull up his contact and dial.
The call connects after several rings.
