Chapter 2
Dax watched Rhen vanish into the shifting mass of bodies from the shadowed alcove of their booth, his fingers absently swirling amber liquor around the bottom of his glass as neon bled across the surface like a fresh bruise.
A sly, dry smile tugged at his mouth as he leaned back into the leather seat, the bass thrumming low and hard beneath his ribs.
“Well,” he muttered, his voice a low scrape over the pounding music, “there goes diplomacy.”
Malakai snorted, a sharp, dismissive sound, though his attention never lingered on the mortals writhing beneath the fractured strobe lights.
His silver gaze continued to sweep the room methodically, sharp and unblinking, cataloging exits, faces, and every potential threat that dared to breathe the same air.
You wanted diplomacy, he signed, his movements clipped and cold. You should’ve left the Charon at the compound.
Cole remained silent beside them, his broad shoulders half-shadowed beneath the sickly crimson glow overhead as he studied the club with increasing focus.
Something about tonight pulled the air too tight.
Bar X always reeked of violence, lust, and the metallic tang of blood, but tonight there was another layer beneath the filth—something tighter, stranger, woven through the French Quarter like wire stretched too close to the void.
Mortals drank with a desperate, nervous edge, their laughter sounding forced even over the heavy throb of the music.
Rogues moved through the crowd with an arrogance that bordered on rabid, no longer skulking in corners like scavengers but drifting openly among prey as though the city already belonged to them.
Even the civilians lingering near the stone walls seemed uneasy, their eyes flicking instinctively toward the exits.
The entire Quarter felt restless.
Beings like them noticed restlessness.
Malakai tipped his chin subtly toward the far side of the club, where two rogues had cornered a trembling male near the bathrooms.
See that?
Dax followed his line of sight, the amusement fading from his face like ice under fire. Normally, rogues fed sloppily, driven by feral instinct and predatory hunger. They lunged. Grabbed. Tore through flesh in chaotic bursts like starving animals chasing the nearest vein.
These two weren’t behaving that way—and Dax recognised them from Sule’s description.
One stood guard at the mouth of the corridor, silent and watchful, while the other leaned close to the victim’s throat, whispering something low enough to make the human freeze in pure, absolute terror.
It wasn’t glamour. It wasn’t compulsion.
It was fear—deliberate, controlled, and fundamentally wrong.
Cole’s expression darkened, his gaze narrowing.
“That’s new.”
A waitress approached the booth, her hands shaking as she tried to hide the panic blooming in her chest. Her pulse fluttered visibly beneath the delicate skin of her throat as she stopped beside the table, a moth orbiting a flame she didn’t understand.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, her voice thin and breathless.
Malakai smiled at her, a gesture that held no warmth, only a sharp, predatory edge. Then one hand moved beneath the edge of the table.
Ask her what she knows.
“Actually, sweetheart,” Dax said, leaning forward, “maybe you can help us instead.”
Her heartbeat jumped harder, an instinctive reaction to the danger sitting in the shadows.
“Seen anything strange around here lately?” he asked, his tone deceptively casual.
The hesitation that crossed her face was a confession before she opened her mouth.
Dax braced his forearms on the table, eyes pinned to hers.
“Talk.”
Her gaze darted nervously around the nightclub before she lowered her voice to a ragged whisper.
“People have been disappearing.”
Cole straightened almost imperceptibly, every trace of distraction leaving him.
“Tourists?”
She shook her head quickly, her eyes bright with tears.
“Dealers. Girls. Street kids. People vanish for days, and then…” Her throat bobbed with unease. “Then they come back wrong.”
Malakai watched her mouth closely before his hands moved again.
Wrong how?
“Wrong how?” Dax repeated.
“They don’t act human anymore,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “It’s like… they’re being worn by something else. Like they’re just shells.”
Silence settled heavily over the booth, thick as the stench of rot and asphalt outside.
Dax exchanged a brief glance with Cole, the same primal warning tightening in his gut.
There it was again—that rotten pressure beneath the city, carrying the unmistakable taint of heretic magic.
Malakai signed, Ask her about the heretics.
“Anybody talking about heretics?” Dax asked.
The waitress physically flinched, her face draining of what little color remained. That reaction alone was all the confirmation they needed.
Tension coiled through the brothers.
“You hear that word around here now,” she whispered shakily, “people stop asking questions. They just run.”
Cole’s massive shoulders tightened beneath his black leather jacket.
“Why?”
Her voice dropped lower still, practically a ghost of a sound.
“Because the last people who asked got found hanging beneath the Claiborne Avenue overpass with symbols carved into their skin. Not even the rain could wash the blood away.”
The bass vibrated beneath their feet like a warning.
Malakai slipped cash carefully into her shaking hand with a short, dismissive nod. Then he signed directly to her, slow enough that the meaning carried even without understanding the language.
Go.
She nodded too quickly and disappeared into the crowd.
Dax exhaled slowly, rubbing his thumb along the rim of his glass.
Cole’s attention shifted abruptly toward the center of the dance floor, his jaw set, eyes burning with internal ferocity. A male stood motionless among the moving crowd, a shadow given form.
He wasn’t dancing. Wasn’t drinking.
He was watching them.
Rainwater still dripped steadily from the hem of his dark coat despite the oppressive heat, and his pale skin flickered beneath the shifting neon as a slow, cruel smile curled across his mouth.
But it was his eyes that held Cole’s attention.
They were too clear. Too sharp.
Rogues didn’t look clear-eyed; they looked hollowed out, starved, and feral.
This male looked composed.
Malakai noticed him a second later, his posture turning predatory.
There.
The male’s smirk widened when their eyes met before he calmly turned toward the rear corridor, his stride purposeful.
Cole was already rising from the booth, muscles coiled and ready.
“That one of their guardians?”
“Soon see,” Dax muttered as he stood, fingers flexing once at his side. “Let’s check it out.”
* * *
Across the club, the two rogues near the bathrooms had already vanished, leaving the shaken mortal slumped against the wall.
The brothers cut through the crowd with practiced ease, mortals parting instinctively before they understood why. The male disappeared through the rear hallway, and Cole shoved the door open hard enough to splinter the wood against stone.
The corridor beyond was narrow and dimly lit, the air thick with damp concrete, iron, and wet asphalt seeping in beneath the rear door.
The male stood waiting at the far end, his jaw set, his eyes burning with a ferocity that matched the darkness.
“You boys took your time,” he said softly, his voice thick with gravel.
Malakai moved without hesitation, surging forward with feral speed to slam the stranger into the wall.
The impact cratered the brick.
The male laughed—a rough, primal sound. Black-red blood spilled from the corner of his mouth beneath the flickering fluorescent light.
“Oh,” he rasped mockingly, “there’s that famous bloodsucker hospitality.”
Cole approached slowly, every movement honed by predatory instinct.
“Who are you? Who’s controlling the rogues?”
The stranger’s smile sharpened.
“You think that’s what you should be asking?”
Dax grabbed him by the throat, his iron grip tightening until cartilage creaked beneath his palm.
“Wrong answer.”
The male tilted his head toward him, fangs flashing briefly.
Then the hallway lights exploded into shards of glass and darkness.
The stranger laughed through his bloodied smirk.
“You smell it yet?” he whispered.
Malakai froze.
Magic.
Ancient and rotten.
The stranger’s gaze drifted upward.
“She’s already coming,” he hissed.
A surge of dread tightened through Cole.
Dax increased the pressure around the stranger’s throat.
“Who?”
The stranger smiled wider.
“The marked one.”
Black veins raced from beneath his collar and spread across his throat. His body convulsed violently in Dax’s grip.
“The Charon will kneel for her,” he rasped.
Then whatever force held him upright vanished beneath Dax’s hand.
He died smiling.
Three rogues surged from the shadows, their movements snapping into a merciless rhythm that didn’t belong to feral creatures.
Two were the males from beside the bathrooms—the same rogues Sule had ordered them to bring back alive.
The third came from a recessed doorway farther down the corridor, unfamiliar but moving with the same unnatural coordination.
Dax moved first.
No hesitation.
He met the first attack like a storm breaking loose from the dark, his broad shoulders nearly clipping the walls as a rogue lunged from a side doorway with a rusted machete raised high over his head.
The male never completed the swing.
Dax caught the rogue by the throat mid-charge and slammed him backward so hard the concrete wall cratered behind his skull.
“Dumb fuck,” Cole muttered.
The rogue convulsed in Dax’s grip, black blood spraying from his mouth as Dax lifted him completely off the ground. His expression never changed. No rage. No effort. Just cold brutality as he drove his fist straight through the male’s sternum.
The body hit the floor twitching.
The other two rogues exploded out of the darkness.
One came low, twin blades flashing, while the other dematerialized halfway down the hall in a ripple of filthy black smoke, reappearing behind Malakai with animal speed.
Too slow.