Chapter Five
SCAR
That Evening
The accountant’s office is tucked above a dry-cleaning business on Fourth Street, hidden behind a door that looks like a supply closet and smells like one too. Fluorescent lighting and a secondhand desk that are stacked with ledgers—beautiful in their dishonesty.
Daniel, our accountant, is small, twitchy, and permanently smells like ink and stress. He’s the kind of guy who triple checks numbers because he knows screwing up around this club can get real painful, real fast.
And lately, with Roxy digging through the books alongside him, we already know something is dirty in the accounts.
He’s talking about the bar.
I know that because his mouth keeps moving while the laser pointer shakes across a spreadsheet tied to The Anchor & Anarchy, our totally legal little riverside pub that sells overpriced beer, greasy food, and cleans dirty money smoother than half the shell companies in the city.
Then, my phone rings.
Ruckus’ name appears on the screen, and Ruckus doesn’t call unless something is bleeding.
I’m already standing when I answer it, “Talk.”
“The Anchor & Anarchy.” His voice is tight, stripped of its usual rhythm. “Three rogues. They went through the front window about four minutes ago. Staff is locked in the kitchen. Civvies are running.”
“Shit, all right, I’m close by. I’m on it,” I tell him, then end the call, pocketing my phone. “Daniel…” I don’t look at him. “Stay here.” I’m gone before the sentence finishes landing, my vampire speed taking me faster than his eyes can comprehend.
The night air hits me like a slap as I mount my bike, start it, and pull hard into the street, carving through traffic that doesn’t move nearly fast enough.
My headlights strobe past in pale streaks as the engine opens beneath me, and the world narrows down to the fastest line between where I am and where I need to be.
The Anchor & Anarchy sits on the riverside with its windows full of warm light on any given evening.
Tonight, two of those windows are gone, glass scattered across the pavement like broken teeth, and the sound reaching me from the end of the block lands sharp.
It threads through the night in jagged pulls, a voice shredded thin, catching and forcing itself higher, louder, past anything a body should be able to sustain.
I hear the breath stutter between it, the strain, and the way it doesn’t stop.
It’s not a bar fight.
It is someone breaking.
I’m off the bike before it fully stops, the kickstand catching as I’m already moving, crossing the pavement in strides that eat distance faster than a human eye can comfortably follow.
The front door is hanging at an angle from one hinge.
I go through the gap beside it, dropping my shoulder, reading the space in the single second before I’m fully inside.
The bar is trashed.
Not robbed or tossed by some drunk asshole looking for cash. This place got hit by something strong enough to tear through it without caring what broke along the way.
Barstools lie splintered across the floor. Liquor bottles drip down shattered shelves. The register is in pieces near the end of the bar, like somebody ripped it out and threw it for fucking fun.
Two rogue vampires are ripping through the place like rabid animals, smashing into tables and walls with the mindless kind of violence that comes when the hunger burns away every last piece of control.
A third has a guy spread across the bar with its fangs buried in the victim’s throat. The sound coming out of him hits the back of my jaw hard enough to make my teeth clench.
I don’t slow down.
The nearest rogue snaps toward me just in time to realize I am there before I’m on it. My hand clamps around the back of its skull, and I drive it forward hard enough to slam its face into the support pillar beside us.
The whole damn column shudders on impact. The sound blends into one ugly hit that cuts through the bar’s chaos.
It drops to the floor in a dazed heap.
The second one comes in from my left like it thinks speed is going to save it, all aggression and bad decisions, the kind of move that works fine on people who don’t know how to hold their ground.
This is the wrong place for that, my friend.
I move into the attack instead of away from it, giving the rogue just enough space to think it’s got me, letting it chase the opening like a starving animal.
Its claws rip past close enough for me to feel the air shift against my skin. One bad step and it would have opened me up.
But I don’t miss steps.
This is my fucking ground!
And it doesn’t get to take anything from me on it.
I step into the hit like I’m looking for a fight instead of trying to avoid one, catching the rogue’s arm before the claws can land. My hand clamps around its wrist while the other locks above the elbow hard enough to crush bone.
Then I crank the bastard sideways with no finesse. There are no fancy moves, just brute force and leverage.
Its body keeps charging forward while I drag the arm in the opposite direction, twisting it across its chest until the whole shoulder pulls tight as a chain ready to snap.
For half a second, the joint fights me, then it blows apart with a wet crack.
The scream that tears out of it is savage and animalistic, the arm hanging dead at its side while it stumbles into the wrecked barstools trying to stay upright. It makes a noise, something sharp and cut off, more shock than anything else.
Good.
Let the rogue feel it.
I stay in close, crowding it before it can recover, before whatever passes for instinct in it can catch up and try to turn this back around. My hand slides from its arm to the back of its neck, fingers digging in, locking down, the position as familiar as the weight of a bike under me.
This part never changes.
Control the movement.
End it!
There’s a moment where everything settles into place, where the fight stops being a fight and starts being a decision, and I don’t hesitate. I spin behind it and hook my arm around its throat, locking my hands together before the rogue can fight its way loose.
Then I wrench hard.
The crack punches through the bar loud and brutal.
Final.
Its whole body drops limp against me straight after, all that rage and hunger cutting out in an instant like somebody ripped the power cord from the wall.
For a second, I’m still holding the dead weight upright while broken glass crunches under our boots and the music keeps playing somewhere in the background like none of this shit is unusual.
Then I shove the corpse off me and let it crash to the floor. It hits hard and stays there, dead weight on broken concrete. Just another dumb bastard who thought it could tear through Kings’ territory and survive the experience.
Not happening.
The third one releases the man at the bar.
The civilian hits the floor, gasping, crawling, and I don’t have attention for him right now because the rogue has turned its focus to me, and whatever is driving its behavior tonight is something rawer than standard frenzy.
Its eyes are flat, evacuated red, running entirely on hunger and aggression, the same red of my eyes, but I have learned to control my urges.
When it lunges, it lunges with everything, no caution or survival instinct, nothing but the overwhelming, feral need to destroy whatever is nearest.
I catch it by the throat.
My back hits the bar hard enough to rattle the bottles behind it, wood biting into my spine as my boots find traction against the floor, and I hold it there, its weight driving in, its hands clawing at my forearm hard enough to tear through leather and drag heat across my skin beneath.
Its jaws snap inches from my face, the sound sharp and brittle, like something breaking that wasn’t meant to.
I can smell what it’s fed on…
Human.
Fresh enough that it hasn’t faded, copper and salt clinging to its mouth, mixing with the sour edge of rot that rides underneath every rogue that’s gone too far.
Something moves through me.
Not anger.
Colder.
Quieter.
The kind that doesn’t rush.
I tighten my grip where I’ve got it pinned, feel the strain in its neck as it fights for leverage, distance, or anything it can use to turn this back in its favor.
It doesn’t get it.
My hand shifts just enough. Fingers locking in, finding the angle beneath the jaw, the point where control turns into outcome, and for a second, everything narrows to that single line of contact, to the tension wound tight between us.
It thrashes once, hard, claws digging in, teeth snapping closer.
I turn.
The movement is short and controlled.
The break lands deep, not sharp but heavy, a thick, internal crack that I feel through my grip as its body seizes against me, the fight dropping out of it all at once.
Its hands go slack.
Its weight changes—dead weight.
I hold it there for half a second longer, making sure, feeling for anything that might try to come back, but nothing does. Then I let it drop.
It hits the floor in a loose, heavy collapse, all tension gone, nothing left holding it together but gravity.
Three down.
The silence that falls is thick and broken only by the sound of one person still crying somewhere toward the back of the room, and the wet, unsteady breathing of the man on the floor near the bar, who is alive and will stay that way.
I straighten my leather cut, roll my shoulder where a claw caught it deep enough to matter, and begin the automatic calculation of damage, witnesses, and cleanup requirements…
Suddenly, glass explodes inward from above.
Not a window—the skylight.
I hear her a fraction before she hits, and she lands without hesitation, knees bending to take the drop, easing what should have been a hard impact. Her hand touches down for a second, grounding, and then she’s pushing back up in one fluid motion like some goddamn superhero.