Chapter 8
EIGHT
The taxi dropped me at the mouth of a narrow street that bled into the Low Warrens.
I paid with a hand that refused to stop shaking, the notes slick with nervous sweat.
Eamon’s voice still echoed in the small space of the cab—the promise to tell me everything, cut short by the roar of the power now clawing at my skin.
He’d given me the history, the tragedy, and the lie, but the world had broken before he could give me a name.
I was running towards a crime scene with a soul I didn’t recognise and a definition he never got to finish. Who am I.
The moment the car pulled away, the city’s familiar murmur was swallowed by a different kind of sound—a deep, resonant vibration rising from the pavement itself. It travelled up through the soles of my shoes, a discordant frequency that set my teeth on edge.
My jacket was too thin against the damp chill.
Every breath was an intake of air saturated with wet rot, rust, and a faint, acrid tang like burnt sugar.
The energy Eamon warned me about beat under my skin, a frantic tempo that had nothing to do with my own heart.
The scar on my shoulder was a hot coal pressed against the bone.
Dane was waiting, a dark shape leaning against the brickwork of a defunct pawn shop.
He watched my approach, a silent sentinel in the gloom.
As the distance closed, the world tilted.
The panicked drumming of his heart was audible even over the wind, a counterpoint to the steady shudder beneath my feet.
I could smell the leather of his jacket, the rain on his hair, and beneath it, the clean, earthy scent of him—spiked with the acrid salt of alarm.
He pushed himself off the wall as I stopped in front of him. His eyes scanned my face, and the mask of professional detachment slipped for a fraction of a second. I must have looked like a ghost.
“What happened to you?” His voice was low, the usual dryness sandpapered away by something raw.
Words clawed up my throat, desperate to break loose, but they crumbled before I could force them out. I couldn’t explain the emptiness. Not here. Not yet.
“Later,” I whispered, the sound so thin it was almost lost to the wind whistling down the alley. “We don’t have time.”
His jaw tightened. A sign of frustration—maybe doubt—crossed his face before he schooled his features back into a hard line. He looked like he wanted to argue, to grab my arm and demand an answer, but he didn’t. He just gave a short, curt nod.
“This way.”
He turned and led me into the warren of passages.
I followed, feeling his presence just ahead of me, a solid wall of concern I didn’t deserve.
He kept his pace measured, body angled slightly towards me, a silent barrier between me and the unseen threats of the Lows.
He was wary. He sensed it—the wild, unstable energy crackling around me like static.
The alleys narrowed, shouldering out the sky until only a sliver of bruised purple remained visible overhead. Rusty fire escapes groaned in the wind while water dripped from corroded pipes, each drop echoing like a gunshot in the sudden, overwhelming clarity of my own hearing.
The steady drip of a leaking pipe. The frantic flutter of a trapped bird across the street.
I heard all of it. Everything was too much.
Too loud. Too bright. The world was no longer a familiar painting; it was a fevered sketch, every line etched and vibrating.
The low-grade buzz of illegal magic behind a steel door.
The heavy, sleeping minds in the tenement above.
The cold vacuum of a dead zone just around the corner.
It was all different. Not just heightened. The very fabric of reality stretched thin, turning transparent. Like I was seeing the code beneath the world.
I stumbled, foot catching on an uneven flagstone.
Dane’s hand was instantly on my elbow, steadying me. His touch was firm, grounding, but the contact sent a jolt through me—a clash of his solid reality against my wavering, unstable one.
“Careful,” he murmured, his grip lingering a moment too long.
We rounded another corner into a cobbled court. A single young officer stood guarding a derelict workshop. His face was pale under the flickering streetlamp, and when he spotted us, he sagged with visible relief.
“He’s in here,” the officer said, voice cracking. He gestured towards the workshop, glancing behind him, expecting a phantom to materialise from the dark.
No ACD yet. Good. A brief reprieve from bureaucratic interference.
I nodded at the officer, a silent acknowledgment of his unease. Dane brushed past me, his torch already cutting a swathe through the gloom ahead. The air bit with the metallic taste of damp rust and something acrid beneath the general decay—a scent I recognised but couldn’t quite place.
We stepped through a gaping doorway, once a loading bay, now just a jagged tear in corrugated iron.
The concrete floor crunched under our boots, littered with shattered glass, discarded tools, and unidentifiable detritus.
My torch beam danced over rusted workbenches and machinery hulking in the recesses while dust motes hung thick in the air, swirling in the unsteady light.
“Stay sharp,” Dane warned.
The workshop was a maze of forgotten industry.
Cobwebs draped from the ceiling like rotten lace.
Every clanking pipe, every creaking beam, every whisper of wind through a broken pane seemed amplified, distorted.
The hair on my arms stood on end. There was an echo in the silence—not just an acoustic one, but a magical vibration, stretched thin.
Then I saw him.
The victim lay sprawled on an oil-stained sheet near the back wall, amidst a pile of disused engine parts. Adult male, early thirties, judging by the short dark hair and strong jawline. His eyes stared blankly at the high, grime-streaked ceiling.
He was Calysteri; the faint, residual signature of his innate magic whispered against my senses—or rather, the gaping hole where it should have been.
The emptiness screamed. It was the same mark. The same absolute absence. Talia was the first. Now there was another.
A prickle started on my left shoulder, growing quickly into a scalding weight. My scar. It hammered a raw, insistent cadence beneath my skin.
I forced myself to focus on the victim, pushing down the frantic energy blossoming inside me. His shirt was torn open, revealing a pale chest marred by the struggle, but my eyes were drawn to his arm, flung out against the dirty floor. There, seared onto the right forearm, was the sigil.
It was stark, brutal. The brand formed a crude triangle, its jagged lines charred deep into the muscle, looking like it was inflicted seconds ago. It glowed faintly, a dull ruby ember in the dim light. A tangible, malevolent energy emanated from it, scraping against my awareness. It dragged at me.
“Same as the other one,” Dane stated, voice clipped, an edge of controlled fury in it. He crouched down, not touching the body, eyes locked on the sigil.
The air around us thickened, viscous with a fresh layer of magic—not ancient and layered like the Old Quarter, but recent, raw, and still reverberating. Too recent. Like the perpetrator had just walked out of the room.
My blood jumped. The air was stretched, the vacuum of a massive presence recently removed, leaving a subtle vibration. A resonance. Someone powerful had definitely left this spot minutes ago. My skin crawled.
Dane straightened, his gaze sweeping the room. He inhaled sharply, his Varkyn instincts screaming.
A faint scuffing sound echoed from deeper within the workshop. It didn’t come from the storm outside, but from the darkness inside.
A soft scrape, then silence. It was barely audible, easily dismissed as the building settling, or a rat, or the wind. But my new, hypersensitive ears picked it up.
The hair on the back of my neck rose.
Dane’s head snapped up. His eyes, already intense, hardened. He stared towards the back of the workshop, where a heavy curtain of dust and murk concealed another section.
Our gazes met. He heard it too.
The killer was still here.
Dane didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He tilted his head slightly to the left—a signal as clear as a shout.
I gave a curt nod. I’ll go right.
We melted into the workshop’s oppressive darkness, moving with a synchronised stealth honed over years of raids in the city’s most unforgiving corners. The gloom didn’t matter. Something in my vision had clicked into place, the darkness receding into grey but into a new kind of sight.
The world resolved into a mosaic of faint light and heat.
Rusted metal was a cold, dead blue. Forgotten tools were dull grey ghosts.
But one shape blazed—a living flame of warmth and wrongness searing against the chill.
It moved towards the back of the workshop, a thread of anxious energy pulling taut.
I followed it, feet making no sound on the grit-strewn floor.
A blur of motion. A spectre detached itself from a stack of crates, impossibly fast. It darted down a narrow rear hallway, a blur of dark clothing and panicked flight.
The hunt was on.
From the darkness to my left, a heavy, sodden slap hit the ground—the unmistakable sound of a leather jacket being discarded. I didn’t need to look.
Then came a sound like a thick root snapping—a wet crack of bone and the violent tearing of sinew. It was over before a human could blink. I had seen it a dozen times, yet the raw, primal violence of it always stole my breath.
I glanced over. The man was gone. In his place crouched a beast of black fur and amber eyes, its massive shoulder reaching nearly to my own. Muscles coiled tight, a low growl tore from him that was pure territorial fury. Then he bolted.