Chapter 2 #2
Malakai pivoted sharply, his coat flaring around his legs as he caught the rogue’s wrist before the blade could connect. He moved with terrifying precision, every strike calculated, economical, controlled.
He twisted hard enough to snap the male’s forearm backward with a sickening crunch before driving the heel of his palm upward beneath the rogue’s jaw.
The impact shattered teeth.
The rogue staggered sideways, hissing through his bloodied mouth. Malakai drew one of his curved daggers in a silver flash and buried it through the male’s eye socket to the hilt.
The rogue collapsed instantly.
Cole had already engaged the third.
Unlike Dax’s overwhelming force or Malakai’s surgical efficiency, Cole fought by reading his opponent—absorbing each movement, finding the pattern, then answering with punishing precision.
The corridor became a blur of black leather, steel, and snarling teeth as he drove the rogue backward, his blade colliding with the male’s twin weapons so violently that sparks burst between them.
The rogue was good.
Too good.
Which meant heretic-trained.
“You fucking mutt,” Cole snarled, ducking another slash.
The rogue grinned through bloodstained teeth and suddenly changed his grip.
Dax barked a warning.
Too late.
The hidden blade carved across Cole’s abdomen in a brutal diagonal slice, opening him from hip to ribs.
The sound was wet.
Thick, dark crimson poured through Cole’s shredded shirt, steaming as the wound split wide enough to expose slick muscle beneath. The force of the strike drove him backward into the wall hard enough to crack the concrete behind his spine.
The rogue lunged to finish it.
Cole smiled.
Actually fucking smiled.
“Tut-tut, motherfucker.”
The male froze as Malakai’s dagger erupted through the side of his throat from behind.
Black blood exploded across the corridor.
The rogue staggered, choking, his hands clawing weakly at the blade protruding through his neck—
—and Cole seized him by the face before slamming the rogue headfirst into the edge of a steel pipe.
Bone cracked.
The body crumpled at his boots.
Silence crashed down the corridor except for the distant bass upstairs and the steady drip… drip… drip of blood hitting concrete.
Dax stepped over the corpses first, his eyes dropping immediately to the massive wound across Cole’s abdomen, where blood still sheeted heavily between his fingers.
“That’s bad.”
Cole looked down casually at the torn flesh hanging open across his stomach before spitting blood onto the floor.
“I’ve had worse.”
Panic echoed from the club as the rogues lay in ruined heaps.
Dax looked from the two males Sule had wanted alive to the stranger’s corpse sprawled beneath the broken lights.
“So much for bringing them in,” he muttered.
Malakai crouched beside one of the rogues and inspected the black veins spreading beneath its torn skin.
This wasn’t normal control.
Cole’s jaw tightened.
“No. It was engineered. Whatever answers they had were never meant to leave this corridor.”
Dax stared down at the stranger’s corpse with visible disgust.
“I really fucking hate cryptic people.”
Dax’s phone buzzed against his body.
Rhen’s name flashed across the screen.
He answered, but only static met him before the line went dead.
The brothers exchanged a long, grim look.
“Rhen?” Cole asked.
Dax’s jaw tightened as he tried to call back.
No answer.
Not surprising.
Malakai rose, wiping blood from his blade as rain hammered the building outside.
You think this was about him?
Cole looked toward the darkness leading deeper into the Quarter. Something had shifted beneath the city, ancient and patient, finally beginning to move.
“I think,” Cole said quietly, “that one of you is gonna need to do me a solid and stitch me the fuck up. I’m leaking all over the damn place here.”
Dax stepped closer to get a better look.
“Dibs. I’ll do it. That’s a tasty one, brother.”
Cole stared at him.
“You’re a deeply disturbed individual.”
“Thank you.”
Before they left, Dax sent a two-word message to the club’s night manager.
Rear corridor.
Bar X had survived this long because its people knew what needed to disappear before NOPD arrived.
Dax laughed as the three brothers dematerialized.
* * *
They rematerialized inside the compound’s medical wing in fragments of black smoke and shifting darkness, harsh amber light spilling across polished concrete floors. Warmth hit them after the damp rot of Bar X, carrying antiseptic beneath the familiar scents of leather, whiskey, and old stone.
Cole barely made it three steps before blood hit the floor again in a thick splash.
One of the clan’s civilian medics looked up from a workstation and visibly paled.
“Oh my God—”
“I’m fine,” Cole snapped instantly.
“You are literally leaking.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Dax caught the back of his jacket before he could continue stalking forward and physically shoved him down onto one of the medical tables hard enough to rattle the steel frame beneath him.
Cole hissed through clenched teeth.
“Careful, asshole.”
“You heal crooked if you move.”
Vampire flesh closed quickly, but it wasn’t intelligent. If the wound edges shifted, the body would seal them exactly where they lay.
“I heal crooked because you stitch like a fucking serial killer.”
The medic started toward them with a trauma tray.
Dax held out one hand.
“We’ve got it.”
The medic looked from him to the wound hanging open across Cole’s abdomen.
“You very clearly don’t.”
“Sutures,” Dax said.
With an expression that suggested she was reconsidering every choice that had led her there, she shoved the tray toward him and remained close enough to intervene.
Clan warriors usually patched one another. Their flesh regenerated fast; the stitches only needed to hold the wound together long enough for the body to do the rest.
Malakai leaned against the far counter, cleaning blood from beneath his nails with eerie calm.
Dax returned holding sutures, gauze, whiskey, and a curved needle.
Cole immediately frowned.
“Why’ve you got the whiskey?”
Dax twisted the cap off with his teeth.
“For me.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
The first stitch punched through torn flesh.
Cole jerked violently upright with a snarl.
“Jesus fucking Christ—”
“You want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Then shut the fuck up.”
Another stitch.
Then another.
Each pull of the thread dragged the torn flesh slowly back together, Cole’s blood smearing across Dax’s hands and forearms while Cole gripped the edge of the table hard enough to bend the steel beneath his fingers.
“You enjoying this?” Cole asked tightly.
Dax’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Little bit.”
Cole glared across the room.
“Dick.”
The final stitch cinched tight.
Dax shoved fresh gauze against the wound before stepping back to admire his work like a man proud of repairing drywall.
“There.”
Cole glanced down at the brutal row of black stitches stretched across his abdomen.
“That looks horrific.”
“It’s closed.”
“Barely.”
Dax took another slow drink of whiskey before tossing the bottle onto the table beside him.
“Next time, duck faster.”
Cole flipped him off without hesitation as the medical wing settled back into silence around them.
But somewhere beyond the compound walls, beneath the pulse of New Orleans nightlife and rain-soaked streets, the marked one was already drawing closer.