Chapter 37
Rhen stalked out of the alley first, his body held so tightly under control that every step became a battle against the violence threatening to break free.
The hunt had not ended. It had merely changed shape.
When he found the heretic again, there would be no second opportunity to escape.
Beyond the alley, the French Quarter stretched beneath the rain, wet and gleaming.
Streetlights shivered across puddles, while neon reflections bruised the pavement with color.
The scent of blood clung to the night, copper and iron hanging heavily enough in the air to stir hunger even in males already drowning in it.
Rhen led without looking back.
Cole fell into position just behind his shoulder, his massive presence moving like a wall through the narrow streets.
Malakai remained on the opposite side, quieter and watchful, his earlier humor replaced by the cold calculation that emerged whenever the world became a problem requiring a violent solution.
“Where do you think he’s running?” Cole asked.
“It does not matter,” Rhen replied. “I will find him.”
Malakai caught Cole’s eye and signed, He will. He also appears determined to die in the process.
“It will catch up with him eventually,” Cole said, although his attention remained on the surrounding corners, balconies, and rooflines.
Rhen’s focus never shifted.
The heretic had left something behind. It was neither a footprint nor an ordinary scent, but a faint residue Rhen could taste in the wet air: the sour burn of spellwork and the oily wrongness of magic sharpened into a weapon.
It threaded through the Quarter like a trail intended for monsters.
They followed it into narrower streets, where the buildings closed around them and the shadows deepened. The city grew quieter with each turn, the absence of ordinary sound feeling increasingly deliberate.
Rhen stopped so abruptly that Cole nearly struck his back.
His nostrils flared.
The blood hanging in the air was fresher than what remained from the earlier massacre. Its warmth had not yet faded.
“You smell it?” Cole asked.
Rhen was already moving.
They rounded the corner and found a male slumped against the wall of a narrow side passage. His head rested at an unnatural angle, and his limbs had folded beneath him as though someone had dropped the body without care.
Malakai crouched and pressed his fingers against the blood-soaked clothing. He looked toward his brothers.
Fresh. Whoever did this is still close.
The dead male’s throat had been torn open. It was not the wound of a clean feeding but a savage destruction of flesh that had allowed blood to pool beneath him faster than the rain could carry it away. His hands remained clawed against the stones, and terror had frozen his eyes open.
Rhen lowered himself beside the corpse.
This was not simply the work of a starving rogue.
The violence had been arranged to communicate something.
Malakai examined the clothing before signing, One of ours?
“Perhaps.”
Rhen touched the blood with two fingers. Beneath the copper scent lay the chemical bitterness of burned herbs and oil.
More spell residue.
“Or it is bait,” he said.
Cole’s shoulders rolled back as power gathered restlessly beneath his skin.
“Whatever did this is close.”
A low sound rose from the darkness farther along the passage.
It resembled a growl, although it belonged to neither a human nor an animal.
Rhen stood.
A figure stepped into the weak spill of streetlight.
Another rogue.
This one moved differently from the creatures they had already killed. Red light pulsed through blackened eyes, while its shoulders jerked upon their joints like a marionette being tested by an unseen hand. Its fangs remained exposed, but hunger did not control its expression.
Obedience did.
“They have another one,” Cole said.
Malakai’s mouth curved without humor. He looked toward Rhen and signed, Good. I was beginning to get bored.
The rogue attacked with a precision that did not belong to a mindless creature. It launched itself directly at Rhen like a weapon thrown by another hand.
Rhen met it in the air.
He caught the rogue and drove it into the stones hard enough to fracture the wet surface beneath them. The creature thrashed and hissed, but Rhen’s hand had already closed around its throat, pinning it with irresistible force.
The rogue’s eyes burned without fear.
Fear was no longer controlling it.
“Who is doing this to you?” Rhen asked, tightening his grip until the bones beneath his fingers began to strain. “Who is holding your leash?”
The rogue hissed.
Its mouth twisted into something resembling a grotesque, defiant grin.
Malakai stepped into Rhen’s line of sight.
It will not speak. None of them will.
Rhen made his decision.
He forced the rogue’s head aside and sank his fangs into its exposed throat.
Tainted blood flooded his mouth. It tasted bitter and sharp, contaminated by whatever spell had taken hold inside the creature.
Rhen drank deeper.
He was not feeding for hunger. He followed the wrongness in the blood, searching for some impression of the hand controlling it. The spell resisted him, distorting everything it touched, but the rogue’s mind briefly opened beneath the invasion.
The street disappeared.
Cold eyes looked back at him through a fractured image. A cruel smile flickered into focus, accompanied by raised hands moving as though conducting an orchestra.
Another presence existed behind the face.
It appeared only as a shadow layered over shadow: a suggestion of pale skin, the movement of hair, and a shape the dying mind might have interpreted as feminine.
The impression tore apart before Rhen could seize it.
His awareness slammed back into the passage.
He ripped his fangs free, and the rogue collapsed beneath him as though the force holding it upright had suddenly been severed.
Cole watched him.
“What did you see?”
Rhen wiped the tainted blood from his mouth.
“More than one presence.”
“How many?”
Rhen stood and searched the surrounding darkness.
“It does not matter. We find the heretic and end this now.”
He turned toward the deeper streets, and his brothers followed.
These were no longer isolated rogues.
The violence was coordinated, and Rhen had become its primary target.
They had barely taken ten steps when another growl rose from the darkness. A second answered it, then a third.
Shapes emerged from alley mouths and abandoned doorways. Every rogue carried the same black-red light inside its eyes, and every body twitched as though awaiting a command.
Malakai caught Cole’s attention.
Where are they all coming from?
Cole counted the figures moving closer.
“It does not matter. There are simply more to break.”
The air carried more than rain, blood, and alley rot now. A darker pressure moved across their skin and gathered at the base of Rhen’s skull.
These were not starving rogues following instinct.
They were soldiers wearing the bodies of rogues.
The first entered the light, and Rhen met it with pure violence.
His fist struck the creature’s face hard enough to crush bone and teeth. The body flew backward into the wall and dropped before it could make a sound.
More followed.
They attacked in coordinated bursts, choosing angles and timing with the discipline of a single mind. One caught Rhen along the flank, claws tearing through his coat and opening the flesh beneath.
He barely registered the wound.
Pain was an inconvenience, hunger existed only as background noise, and rage remained the only clean sensation left inside him.
Rhen caught the next attacker by the throat and lifted it from the ground before driving it into the pavement. Stone fractured beneath the impact, and the rogue’s ribs collapsed.
To his right, Cole fought with the force of a wrecking ball. He caught two attackers by their skulls and drove them together until bone broke and blood spread across the wet bricks.
The numbers did not diminish.
They increased.
The wrongness in the air tightened.
Rhen felt the heretic’s influence moving through muscle and nerve, forcing the bodies surrounding them into obedience. Rogues that had briefly attacked independently shuddered before becoming still in the same instant.
Every head turned toward a single shadow.
The heretic stepped into view as though the street had released him from its mouth.
He wore no armor and carried no visible weapon. His confidence appeared sufficient protection as he watched the brothers stand back-to-back among creatures that possessed no control over their own limbs.
The heretic raised his fingers and flexed them once.
Every rogue shivered in response.
Murderous recognition moved through Rhen.
There you are.
He lunged.
The rogues struck him from both sides before he had crossed three steps. Bodies collided with him in unnatural coordination, dragging him downward like trained animals bringing down larger prey.
Claws opened his shoulders. Teeth scraped his skin. Hands closed around his arms and legs, not attempting to feed but to restrain him.
They were holding him for the heretic.
Rhen caught movement in his peripheral vision.
Malakai carved through two attackers with precise brutality, opening space as he signaled a warning toward Rhen.
Another shift disturbed the air.
Dax rematerialized beside Rhen’s left flank with a blade already in his hand. He cut through the nearest rogue’s throat in one controlled arc, sending blood across the street.
Rhen tore an attacker from his chest and broke its neck.
“Kind of you to join us,” he said through split lips.
Dax retained his grin.
“You’re welcome.”
He caught another rogue by the jaw and drove its face into the brickwork.
“I leave you alone for several minutes, and you begin a street war.”
Malakai caught his eye and signed sharply, Less commentary. Kill something.
The heretic watched with growing satisfaction.
“You are too late,” he called over the violence. “This city belongs to me now. The prophecy will be mine. The females will be mine, and your king—”
Rhen’s head snapped toward him.
The heretic smiled.
“Your king has been quiet, has he not? Gone for days after she died, almost as though grief is not the only thing consuming him.”
Rhen surged against the bodies holding him.
“Mention him again.”
The heretic’s expression became almost conspiratorial.
“Sule is not here to save you, and he will not return. Not when he is—”
He stopped before completing the sentence.
One subtle movement of his fingers tightened the rogues’ grip around Rhen.
This was not merely a fight.
It was a trap constructed to make Sule’s brothers bleed where the city could witness their defeat.
Cole tore an attacker from the ground and threw it into another, but even his strength was beginning to strain beneath the numbers. Every creature that fell seemed to be replaced by two more carrying the same unnatural light in their eyes.
Dax moved through them with lethal precision, blood coating his hands as he repeatedly looked toward the swarm restraining Rhen.
“This is a setup!”
Malakai ripped a rogue from Dax’s back and signed directly into his line of sight.
That is obvious. Keep cutting.
Rhen fought against the bodies surrounding him, shattering bones and tearing limbs free. The mass held him away from the single target that mattered.
The heretic continued watching.
Then Cole stepped forward.
Rhen recognized the change behind his eyes before anyone else reacted. The air thickened as the storm inside Cole rose to meet the violence around them.
Rain began falling harder.
Clouds turned above the Quarter in a tight spiral, gathering in response to Cole’s power.
Malakai forced himself into Cole’s line of sight and signed sharply.
Do not.
Cole did not acknowledge him.
Pain had already drawn his face tight, deepening the shadows beneath his cheekbones. Even so, he raised his hands toward the sky.
“Cole,” Rhen warned.
Cole could no longer look at him.
Power struck.
Thunder detonated above the street with enough force to rattle windows and trigger car alarms throughout the surrounding blocks. Lightning split the sky and descended into Cole’s raised hands.
His body convulsed.
A scream tore from him as the storm exploded outward.
Wind and force threw rogues into walls. Skulls broke against brick, limbs twisted, and bodies scattered across the flooded street. Rain drove sideways through the Quarter while the pavement fractured beneath their feet.
The pressure released Rhen.
He tore free and surged toward the heretic.
The male remained untouched at the center of the storm, his coat moving in the violent wind while Cole destroyed himself to buy his brothers a few seconds.
“You cannot stop me,” the heretic said. “You are pieces in a game you do not understand.”
Malakai caught Rhen’s gaze through the chaos and pointed toward their enemy.
Stop him.
Rhen lunged.
The heretic lifted one hand almost lazily.
The remaining rogues moved together and struck Rhen in another wall of bodies, forcing him back.
Cole continued channeling the storm.
Blood appeared beneath his nose and then at his ears, darkening his rain-soaked skin. His scream became ragged beneath the strain, but he did not release the power.
The heretic smiled.
“Let him fall. Let him burn himself empty, and another one of you will belong to me.”
The street turned white.
Cole released one final surge of power, sending it through the Quarter with enough force to destroy everything in its path. Rogues combusted into ash and torn flesh. Brickwork collapsed, windows shattered, and the air filled with dust, rain, and blood.
Rhen struck the ground.
The impact forced an unnecessary breath from his lungs. His muscles burned, his flesh hung open in several places, and regeneration had already begun drawing the wounds together.
The storm weakened.
Wind became a whisper, and thunder retreated across the city.
Silence followed.
It offered no peace.
It was the silence left behind by mass death.