Chapter 9
rune
. . .
Two days later, we were back at Shadowmere Abyss.
The moon was the sliver of a crescent. The lake looked the same, black, still, and reflective, but the air felt heavier somehow.
Three more bodies had washed up.
Two banshees and one phantom.
All our investigations had panned out the same way, and Dimitri, Cassie, Bradley, and I all took turns staking out the lake.
None of us saw a thing.
Our squad stood in silence as Morgan and Koa lifted the sheets.
“Same death pattern,” Koa said quietly. “Drowned but not with lake water.”
A shiver worked through me at the thought.
“But look at this.” Morgan pressed her palms to the banshee’s chest. Magic flickered, then streaked faintly blue. “Ice residue in the lungs,” Morgan murmured. “It’s less than the others had and diluted, but it’s clearly there. They were killed with ice magic and then dumped here.”
That nauseated me.
“Anyone else feel like we’re chasing a fae with a grudge?” Slater muttered under his breath.
“Considering the amount of emotion in the magical residue, yes,” Sylver answered.
We walked to the shore to question Baron again, but instead of being as cooperative and kind as before, he was furious.
The kelpie breached near the shore in a spray of water. He was in his white horse form, eyes blazing a too-bright green as he shifted to his normal form.
“It’s not me,” he snapped before Jesper could say a word. “I told you. I would know if I dragged three more bodies in here.”
“We believe you,” Jesper murmured.
Baron threw his arms out. “Do you? Because every corpse that floats up here gives the locals another excuse to whisper my name. I haven’t drowned anyone but the damned human. I’ve been behaving.”
“We believe you,” Jesper repeated. “Which means that someone is deliberately using your lake as their dumping ground. That’s why we’re still here.”
“Then figure it out,” Baron snarled. “Because I am about one more corpse away from snapping and making their framing job accurate.” He sucked in a breath, visibly reigning himself back in. His gaze cut to the bodies.
Something like guilt flickered across his face.
“I have cameras,” he said stiffly. “Security system I bought from the fae market.” He jerked his chin toward the far shore. “It seems to be enchanted and impossible to be tampered with. I installed it yesterday. I already sent the feed to your tech team.”
“We have it,” Corin said.
He and Slater sat at the terminal up the shore. The glow of the screen lit their faces, making them look more tired than usual.
It wasn’t just me who had been struggling with the on-call schedule, but my mates, too.
We’d barely had time to get together. Dimitri and I slept together at night, but that was the most I’d seen of my mates. We’d been too exhausted by the time we got to bed to do anything but sleep.
Even Drecken had been working overtime with the council because of the humans.
“Your system isn’t as interference-proof as you were led to believe,” Slater mused. “Every time we get near the timeframe where a victim would have gone into the water, the image warps.”
Corin pressed a button on the terminal, and a projection of the screen appeared above it for us to see.
It was a view of the lake’s surface. For a few seconds, it was clear; then, the picture fuzzed with lines of static dragging across.
The glitch resolved briefly into a vague figure near the shore.
They were tall and slender, wearing a navy robe.
Before we could see their face, the screen turned black.
When the video snapped back, the lake was empty.
“And then it loops again,” Corin said. “Same thirty seconds of nothing but the figure. Over and over. The more we dig, the more fae interference we hit.”
“And we saw nothing last night. Most definitely not someone in a robe. Fuck,” Bradley cursed.
“We were on the other side, but I don’t see how we missed it,” Cassie muttered, fist clenched at her side.
“At least that’s more than the Bizarre’s cameras caught.” Kane stepped closer, frowning. “Wait. On that robe are spell sigils woven into the seams,” he said. “It’s a fae spell. The fae magic in the robe is deliberately shorting out the tech every time they act.”
“Which means,” Lysa said with a sigh, “they’re aware of the cameras.”
“I’m sending the system back. The enchantment clearly doesn’t work.” Baron swore low. “Nobody will believe me that an ice fae is murdering banshees and phantoms, dumping them in my lake, and scrambling my security.”
“Whether they believe it or not, that’s our working theory.” Jesper ran his hands through his white hair.
Baron’s jaw clenched. “Fantastic, then find them. If one more corpse floats through my territory, I swear to the Fates, I’ll drag the next person I see into my depths and feed on their last breath.”
Without waiting for a reply, he surged backward and vanished beneath the surface with a furious splash.
“Fantastic,” Slater said, eye twitching. “That’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“It will be,” Corin assured us.
Irritation flared through my bonds, mirroring my own.
It would not be fine if we couldn’t catch the fucking killer.
Our investigation dragged on for hours.
We searched the shorelines, followed dead trails, cross-referenced fae visitors, banshee disappearances, phantom disappearances, and spoke with the locals.
Every single lead we followed was a dead end.
By dusk, we still had nothing, except three families mourning their family members.
There was a serial killer in the Bizarre, too good at covering their tracks. A clearly innocent kelpie was being accused in the village and pushed toward violence.
Yet there was nothing we could do if we couldn’t find the killer.
The debrief at HQ felt wrong.
We gathered into our squad’s official briefing room, a simple space with a dark meeting table and plush red chairs. The walls were lined with displays of case files, maps, and mugshots of those the squad had caught and those we hadn’t yet.
Today’s highlight held photos of the phantoms and banshees who were victims of this serial killer.
Jesper stood at the front of the room, hands resting on the edge of the meeting table. The screen behind him cast a pale light over his features.
“This case,” he said, scanning the room, “is the kind that haunts us.”
No one spoke, but I shifted in my seat.
Zuko’s hand found my thigh.
“We did everything right,” he stated. “We collected evidence. We followed every viable lead. We engaged local witnesses. We cross-checked magical signatures, tech interference, behavioral patterns, and still the killer is ahead of us. The reason for this is that the killer is most likely fae. Arban and Eleanor are in contact with the Ice Kingdom’s royal advisor about this case, and they’re looking into things regarding this case in the fae realm.
Unfortunately, they have found nothing. That may mean our fae killer is really good at hiding or that they are not going back to the fae realm at all. ”
He nodded to Lysa.
She pushed her glasses up, swallowed hard, and stood up.
“Sometimes killers get ahead. Especially the ones who think, plan, and prepare.” She gestured to the photographs.
“Whoever this is has a pattern. Banshees and phantoms only. Ice magic in the lungs to drown. Shadowmere Abyss is being used as a dumpsite. They’re careful.
They’re not escalated enough to be sloppy yet, even with the emotional scar they’re leaving on their victims within the ice-fragments. ”
Several frustrated growls sounded around the table.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t slip,” she added. “It just means this investigation is going to take time. There have been multiple incidents we can investigate deeper, but there will be more. We don’t want that, of course, but sometimes it’s the only way to get enough data to catch them.”
“So, we need more dead bodies to hope the fucker slips?” Zuko clarified.
“Unfortunately so,” Rhyse answered.
“That’s fucked up,” I muttered, running a hand over my face. “I get it, but it’s fucked.”
Rhyse leaned back in his chair, green eyes half-lidded. “Learn how fucked it is now. Sometimes justice doesn’t arrive on our preferred timetable. Sometimes we have to wait and let them dig their own graves a little deeper before we throw them into it.”
His words were surely meant to be comforting, but they weren’t.
“You all did great work,” Jesper said. “Even if there’s no victory to show for it yet.
You protected each other, contained a human situation that could have exploded into a diplomatic disaster, you have exhausted all leads, and you documented everything.
Your work matters now, for when we catch the killer in the future. ”
“It doesn’t feel like enough,” I said before I could stop myself.
He met my gaze, and his brown eyes softened. “Sometimes it won’t. That’s part of the job, too.”
The briefing wrapped up, but I stayed seated, staring at the highlighted section of phantom and banshee victims until the images blurred.
“Hi, Roo,” Tibby said quietly as he slid into the seat beside me, still looking a little washed-out from the tourmalyke poison, but he was safe, and that was what mattered.
I hadn’t even felt Zuko move from the seat he occupied.
My brows furrowed.
“I told your mates to give me a second to talk to my sister,” he explained. “You were a target again a couple of days ago. Those humans came for you.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “I know.”
“And you’ve got a drude using your brain as a snack bar,” he added with a puff of fire on his exhale.
I winced. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough to kill him when I had the chance.”
“Rune.” His voice softened. “What are the nightmares with Darian about?”
I let my hands drop. “The worst memories I tried to bury and never told you about. He tried to freeze my lungs from the inside, for foreplay. All the shit I tried to block out is being pushed to the front of my mind again.”
“I’m so sorry, Roo.” His jaw tightened. “I hate him.”
“Get in line,” I huffed. “I killed him, and I still hate him.”
“I should’ve known.”
“You couldn’t have.”
“Mom called me earlier,” Tibby murmured. “Before the briefing. She just got a report from the Human Council.”
My stomach dipped. “About what?”
“The humans who got dosed with your stolen DNA. Remember how Drecken said their bodies wouldn’t hold it for long?”
I nodded once. “Yeah, the humans came at me for my DNA again. I figured they’d used the last of it.”
“They did,” Tibby confirmed. “They spread your power into at least thirty humans. Maybe more. But it’s failed, thankfully.
Your DNA is seeping into them irreversibly, disintegrating them at a cellular level.
Their human bodies can’t contain it. It’s eating them alive from the inside out.
They’re losing control of the power they stole, and they can’t fix it.
From Mom’s intel, the last human with your DNA is already dead. ”
A slow, vicious satisfaction curled in my chest. “They tried to make themselves into monsters with my venom, and now it’s killed them.”
“Yeah,” Tibby said. “Pretty much.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Fuck them.”
He huffed a short laugh. “That was Mom’s reaction, too. We theorize that the humans who hit us at the lake came for your DNA again because they no longer have viable samples. Whatever they stole originally has burned out. They didn’t make any lasting replicas.”
“So they wanted another sample,” I summed up. “Fucking assholes.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “But on the bright side? It means they’re desperate. They’re running out of options.”
I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m relieved that they don’t have my DNA anymore, but that’s a pretty big fuck-up for them to make.”
“But they did,” Tibby said firmly. “You’re my sister, Roo. We will not let them get your DNA a second time. Besides, you’re bonded to six powerful supernaturals. As if they’d let it happen.”
I shot him a feral grin. “I wouldn’t let it happen again.”
He nudged my shoulder with his. “See? You’re going to be fine.”
We sat like that for a moment, just my brother and I.
I’d always wanted to be on the same squad as Tibby when we both graduated, and now we were. Granted, I hadn’t graduated just yet, but I was close.
“What scares me the most,” I whispered, “is that we’re leaving the Bizarre with nothing. No killer. No answers. Not even a fucking lead. Just a kelpie on the edge of snapping because everyone thinks he’s a murderer, and there’s a pattern we know will repeat before we can stop it.”
“I know,” Tibby murmured. “This is a first for me, too, but we’ll be back. When the killer slips and gets sloppy, it’ll be our squad to take that fucker down.”
“And until then?” I asked, glancing over at him.
“We train and chase a hundred other issues, but we will wait for another body to wash up in that lake. Then, we will follow every piece of evidence to the fae responsible.”
“And we kill him,” I muttered.
“We hand him over to the Supernatural Council for them to decide. I’m sure that fucker will be locked up in Apex Penitentiary or expedited back to the fae realm,” he told me logically.
I huffed.
Most missions, we walked away victorious. We saved those in trouble or busted a cult. Usually, we took the criminals in. But sometimes, we were forced to walk away from a dark lake in the middle of the night with nothing but dead-end leads.
The knowledge that the next washed-up corpse might be the clue we needed or just another name on a board made my heart ache.
We had left Shadowmere Abyss behind for now, but we weren’t finished with the mission.
It felt like the beginning of a nightmare, a presence we couldn’t yet identify, but whose impact would linger for years to come.