Chapter Fourteen
The bar was half-empty, steeped in gloom and saxophone.
Rick slipped in, collar up, hat low, the smell of the city clinging to his coat.
Calgrave’s damp breath had followed him inside, twisting around the dark wood and liquor haze like a bad habit.
The place was dim, more shadow than light, and smelled of old varnish, nicotine, and things that had long settled into the cracks.
That suited him fine. He didn’t belong anywhere clean tonight.
The bartender—a gaunt man with half-lidded eyes and a face like a graveyard—poured his scotch without questions. No chit-chat, no smiles. Just silence and booze. That, too, suited him fine.
He took the drink and retreated to a corner booth where the shadows were thick and the light barely touched.
It was quiet there, the music bleeding from the bar: brushed cymbals, dusky trumpet, a tune of melancholic dreams. A sconce above him sputtered like a dying star, its gold glow just enough to keep him in half-darkness.
He sat with his back to the wall, lit a cigarette with a hiss of the match, and let the smoke twist around his face. Drink in hand, eyes on the door.
Waiting. He hated this part.
Calling in favors was always a messy business, but this one sat worse than most. He’d burned his last good lead on the case this morning when he released their only suspect, and what little forensics had come back was just noise.
Frank had wanted to come along tonight, insisted on it, even after Rick told him who—what—the contact was.
Rick had to lie that the rendezvous fell through at the last minute to get rid of him.
A coward’s move, perhaps. But he’d seen what Schreck’s presence did to people who didn’t know how to look away. Better Frank stayed clean.
Rick dragged deep on the cigarette and let it burn in his lungs.
He was tired. Bone-tired. The kind that sleep doesn’t fix.
He’d been chasing ghosts and shadows so long he’d forgotten what real felt like.
Since this morning, he’d filed three reports, dodged two phone calls from the DA’s office, run background checks on a pair of witnesses who didn’t exist, and managed not to crash his car while tailing a suspect he had no legal right to follow.
A dark-haired boy with a sinner’s smile and a martyr’s grace.
Rick exhaled smoke, slow and bitter. The kid was wistful, treacherous, magnetic in ways Rick couldn’t name and didn’t want to.
Either he was really innocent—or a very practiced liar.
But the part of him that wanted Ash to be innocent was dangerous.
It made him sloppy. It made him human. And in this business, humanity could kill you quicker than any bullet.
Yet he kept seeing him. In flashes. The lazy sprawl in the passenger seat.
The way his eyes had flicked over Rick like a dare.
The way he’d said detective, drawled it, like a private joke that only one of them was in on.
His scent still stuck in Rick’s nostrils, faint and feral, a fading memory of something unattainable, forbidden.
He rolled the scotch on his tongue and stared into the glass like it might scry answers.
The liquor felt good going down. Grounding.
Maybe that was why he was here. Maybe it wasn’t.
The truth was, he didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Not after burning every bridge short of necromancy.
And not with what he was. There weren’t many sources left who would take his calls, let alone meet him face-to-face.
Most of the city’s dark underworld wanted nothing to do with lycans, especially ones in uniform. Maximilian Schreck was his last option.
Rick ground out his cigarette and eyed the door again. Nothing. The same mournful jazz hummed on. The bartender glanced his way once, then looked away. Only the shadows seemed to inch closer. He checked his watch—half past eleven. The bastard was late.
Then, suddenly, the air changed. Just the faintest prickle at the base of his neck.
The temperature seemed to drop, as though a door had opened somewhere deep below the earth, letting winter seep through.
Something had arrived, crawling beneath the surface of things, more absence than presence.
A hush fell; the room holding its breath in silent anticipation.
Rick’s gaze lifted as the stench came a moment before the body: grave-earth, damp mildew, dried roses rotting in a crypt, sweet and foul at once.
The thing that slid into the booth across from him didn’t make a sound; a ripple in the dark more than a man. “Slade,” the voice rasped, a moth brushing against dry silk. “You must be desperate. Seeking my help.”
Max Schreck looked even worse than Rick remembered.
Not older—he never aged—but worn thin, like a photograph that had been left in the rain.
His black coat was long and dust-caked, buttoned to the throat, and the wide-brimmed hat cast most of his face in shadow.
What little skin was visible had the brittle pallor of candle wax, taut over sharp bones.
His eyes caught the dim light, reflecting it with the cold, liquid gleam of a nocturnal predator.
Rick took another sip, unblinking. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
Schreck smiled, slow and mirthless, revealing teeth that were just a little too long. An admission hung between them, a kind of truce, but it didn’t thaw the chill. Silence stretched.
Without wasting words or time, Rick reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a photo. He slid it across the table. “Seen this before?”
For a moment, Schreck didn’t touch it. Just stared at it like it might bleed.
Then, one bony hand reached over, finally taking it with long, clawed fingers.
His eyes scanned the glyph painted in blood, his face giving nothing away.
The jazz murmured on, but Rick could feel the silence thickening between each breath.
Schreck laid the photo down and pushed it toward Rick. “No.”
Rick thumbed a fresh cigarette. “No?”
Schreck didn’t blink. Maybe he’d forgotten how.
His eyes were the color of milk left too long in the sun.
Everything about him was wrong, like a marionette carved from memories of something once human.
“There are marks older than history, Slade,” he hissed.
“Languages that were buried long before man began carving gods into stone. This one…” He tapped the photo with one long nail, the way a priest might touch a cursed relic.
“This one predates even the memory of my kind.”
Rick didn’t hide his frustration. “Then tell me who might know.”
Schreck didn’t speak at first. His stare drifted past Rick, to nothing. For a moment, he looked almost… uneasy. “There’s a name,” he said at last. “Old, even to us. We call him the Hierophant.”
Rick frowned, blowing smoke. “That supposed to mean something to me?”
A thin smile peeled over Schreck’s face, lipless and reptilian. “The fact that it doesn’t is telling. You’ve lived in this place all your life, and still you prowl the night blindfolded. You really are just a cub with a badge.”
Rick didn’t answer.
“The Hierophant,” Schreck continued with something between contempt and amusement, “keeps to the secret places. He’s a scholar.
An augur. A keeper of things better left forgotten.
Doesn’t often answer questions. Answers tend to carry prices.
But if there’s a mind in this city that might recognize that mark, it’s his. ”
Rick leaned forward. “Where do I find him?”
Schreck’s laugh was like parchment tearing. “You don’t.”
Rick’s voice dropped. “Don’t play games with me, bloodsucker.”
“I’m not. You don’t find him. You wait. He finds you—if he decides you’re worth his time.”
Rick’s patience cracked. “You owe me, Schreck. And I’m collecting. Pass along my name, tell him I want to meet, and I’ll consider your debt settled.”
Schreck’s expression didn’t change, but something unkind twitched in the air. “And if I don’t?”
Rick stubbed out his cigarette and leaned in, voice low. “Then maybe the next raid hits a nest instead of a crack house. Maybe the coroner starts writing ‘exsanguinated’ on the reports again. See how long you last without my protection.”
They regarded one another in silence, the air between them taut as wire. Schreck smiled, this time with all his teeth. “Very well,” he whispered, the words brushed with menace. “I will see that your photograph reaches his hands. That’s the best I can do.”
“Fine.” He’d take what he could get—and pray it was worth the cost.
Schreck’s spidery fingers drifted over the photo, drawing it into the dark fold of his coat. He rose in one seamless motion, less a man standing than a shadow reassembling itself. “Mark me, Slade,” he said softly. “You trespass in the sleep of unspeakable things. You may live to regret it.”
Without another sound, he receded into the gloom. The door shuddered open and closed, though he saw nothing pass through. The cold ebbed; the stench faded with it. The music played on. Voices murmured in low conversation. No one else had noticed a thing.
Rick sat alone in the booth as the night pressed its face to the glass. No answers. Only more names. More riddles.
(11:58 p.m.)
The door clicked shut behind him with a finality that felt too loud.
Around midnight, Thornefield seemed lulled into a troubled slumber, the endless noise of the city blurring into something distant.
Up here on the fifth floor, in this narrow, brick-faced apartment complex wedged between a print shop and a drugstore, only the silence dwelt.
Sirens wept somewhere far away. A dog barked in the street. Thunder rolled far above.