Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Summer waited until she heard Fabian’s footsteps retreat down the corridor before pulling out her phone and opening the tracking app.
She’d downloaded it months ago at Rowan’s insistence—a simple program that would ping her location to designated contacts if she didn’t check in within certain timeframes.
It had already proved useful in allowing Marcus to find her in the old cabin.
She added Vincent’s number to the emergency list. If something happened to her tonight, at least someone would know where to start looking.
The hospital records were still fresh in her memory.
Six patients in two nights, all with the same combination of suspicious symptoms and a lingering aura of magical pollution.
She’d been so focused on treating their immediate medical needs, she hadn’t needed to pay attention to their addresses, but the intake forms were stored in her phone’s notes app.
Now she wanted to track down how they had come across their injuries.
Three lived in the Marigny. Two in the Bywater. One in the French Quarter itself.
Summer pulled up a map, marking each location with a pin. The pattern wasn’t random—it formed a rough triangle near where she and Rowan had investigated the original hybrid attacks. Was someone using the same hunting grounds, probably counting on the Halloween chaos to mask their activities?
She swapped her current clothes for dark jeans and a black sweater. She wanted to blend into the night while still looking like she belonged at the ongoing celebrations. Her medical bag went into a backpack along with a flashlight, pepper spray, and the folded pages of Sybil’s journal.
The New Orleans streets were alive with pre-Halloween energy, but it felt different from previous nights.
Or perhaps it was Summer’s reaction to the surroundings.
She sensed more intensity and desperate, as if the entire city rushed toward an inevitable climax.
Glittering masks caught streetlights and threw back fractured rainbows.
Wings and fangs filled the sidewalks, and Summer found herself studying every costume with paranoid attention.
A group of half-drunk witches stumbled past, their painted faces streaked with glitter and sweat.
Behind them, a trio of musicians played jazz which was so layered with illusion the notes shimmered like heat waves in the humid air.
Summer paused, watching the fae performers with new understanding.
Real supernatural beings hid among the costumed humans, using the celebration as perfect camouflage.
On Frenchmen Street, a vampire’s fangs caught the light, and Summer’s breath caught—until she realized they were too perfectly white and symmetrical to be natural.
But the eyes of the werewolf leaning against a lamppost glowed amber even when the light wasn’t hitting them directly; she quickened her pace.
A man in a long coat brushed past her, a wooden cross hanging around his neck, and for one awful second, she thought it was Vatican hunting gear.
But it was another costume, the cross plastic rather than silver-blessed.
He laughed drunkenly and stumbled on. Summer gazed after him with a racing heart and an appreciation of how completely the supernatural world hid in plain sight.
The first address took her to a renovated shotgun house in the Marigny where James Morrison had been living before his memory went blank.
The building looked normal, occupied, with lights on and Halloween decorations covering the front porch.
Nothing suspicious except for a hint of wrongness which made her supernatural senses recoil.
She strode past, noting the layout and heading to the next location. This one was a small apartment building where two of the victims had lived. The front door was propped open with a brick, and the hallways reeked of antiseptic and reminded her of the morgue.
Summer climbed the stairs to the third floor, following the scent and her instinctive unease.
The door to apartment 3C stood slightly ajar, no light visible beyond it.
She pushed it open carefully, her Le Voile senses immediately detecting the metallic tang of old blood.
If fear had a scent here, it was so thick it seemed to coat the walls.
The apartment was empty, stripped clean of furniture and belongings.
But the walls showed signs of recent activity.
Scrape marks on the hardwood floors indicated where heavy equipment had been dragged through.
Dark stains near the windows made her think of blood and injuries, but her palms stayed cool.
She scented the air, but found no hint of Rowan’s combined scents of pine, cedar and leather.
There was no suggestion he had been here.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Vincent:
Are you well? I was expecting you home for dinner.
Investigating,
she typed back.
I’m fine. I’ll call if I need help.
The third location was a dead end—literally.
The address was a condemned building in the Bywater, fenced off for demolition.
Summer stood across the street, studying the structure, when she noticed the scar on her neck pulsing.
She patted the skin, but the pulse, if there had been one, was quiet now.
She cast around looking for something, anything that could have altered her bond. She was not disappointed.
In the mud beside the building were fresh tire tracks.
Footprints led from the street to a side entrance.
Closer inspection showed it wasn’t secured like the rest of the perimeter.
Summer crept closer, standing on tiptoe to see in the building’s shattered windows.
The unmistakable smell of industrial antiseptic hit the back of her throat.
Summer ducked down and checked her phone. It was still pinging her location to Vincent. She approached the side door carefully, every instinct screaming at her.
The side door was unlocked, and she pushed it open, poised for a protestation of rusted metal screeching.
Inside, she saw what had once been warehouse space.
She flicked on her phone’s flashlight. The space was transformed into a nightmare.
Medical equipment lined the walls—IV stands, monitoring devices, and gleaming surgical tables.
The floor was smooth, polished concrete, sloping toward drains.
She didn’t want to think about what had caused the dark staining.
This was a medical facility, not a hiding place. Clearly, designed for systematic procedures on terrified subjects. A place where the process of transforming humans into hybrids and then forcing them back to human form could be performed over and over until it was perfected.
Summer crept through the space, cataloging what she saw.
She tried to maintain a degree of detachment, but the recently used and unwashed surgical instruments and restraints built into the examination tables, and the combined odor of fear and pain, made her enhanced Le Voile senses want to shut down.
She rubbed her palms feeling the magic aching to burst forth.
A sound from the back of the building made her freeze—voices, low and urgent, speaking in what sounded like Latin. Summer crept closer, straining to make out words.
“Specimen seventeen responded well to the reversal process,” a man was saying. “Memory wipe was complete, no recollection of the transformation period.”
“Excellent. And the batch for Halloween night?”
“Nearly ready. The Vatican representative will be pleased with our progress.”
Summer’s blood froze. They were still here, still working, still preparing for something big on Halloween night. And they were connected to the Vatican hunters, just as Vincent had suspected.
She needed to get out, needed to call Vincent, needed to warn someone before?—
“Dr. Vale.” The voice behind her was only too familiar with its cultured tones. Absolutely the last thing she wanted to hear. “How wonderful to find you here. Though I must admit, I’m disappointed you felt the need to sneak out without telling me where you were going.”
Summer hunched her shoulders, turning slowly to find Fabian standing in the warehouse entrance, his pale eyes glowed red under the harsh fluorescent lights. Behind him were two unknown men, but from their dark clothing and graceful movements, she correctly assumed they were vampires.
“The tracking app was a nice touch,” Fabian continued, stepping into the warehouse. “Very thoughtful of you to make sure Vincent could find you when you inevitably got in over your head.”
Summer’s hand moved to her phone, but one of the men behind Fabian shook his head. Her hand stilled.
“I’m afraid your investigation ends here, Summer,” Fabian said, his voice full of gentle concern. “I must say, I’m impressed by your initiative. You’ve proven even more resourceful than I anticipated.”
The warehouse walls seemed to edge closer; the exit was suddenly much further away. Summer’s mind raced: fight, run, maintain her cover. She made her choice—survival.
“Fabian.” The shake in her voice was not a ruse, genuine fear showed on her face. “Thank God you found me. I—I’ve been so scared.”
His pale eyes studied her face, searching for deception. Summer forced herself to meet his gaze with desperate relief.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she continued, her words tumbling out in a rush. “The research about bond severance, it made me think—what if the hybrid attacks are connected? What if whoever’s doing this knows how to help restore what was broken?”
“So you followed patient addresses.” Fabian’s tone was impossible to read. “Alone. In the middle of the night. Without telling anyone where you were going.”
“I know it was stupid.” Summer wrapped her arms around herself. “But I thought I might just find him.”