Chapter Fourteen
SCAR
The Next Evening
Rogue vampire. Spotted at the Birch Street warehouse, our Birch Street warehouse, where all our artifacts come in through the docks, moving through the loading bay like it owns the place.
Coil clocked it on the perimeter feed and killed the exterior lights before it noticed the cameras, which means we have a small window, and I am not wasting it.
I find Cali in the corridor outside the library, already pulling on her tactical vest like she heard the radio through the wall, which she probably did—Dhampir hearing and all.
She doesn’t wait for an invitation, just falls into step beside me and says, “How many?”
“We don’t know yet,” I reply.
She studies me for a second, like she’s weighing whether that’s enough. Then she nods once, sharp and decisive, like it always is with her.
We move out of the room, through the hallway, down the stairs, the noise of the club fading behind us as we step out into the night. The air is cooler here, carrying the distant hum of the city and the low, constant thrum of engines from the street beyond.
My bike waits where I left it, dark metal catching the glow of the overhead lights.
I reach it first, swinging a leg over and settling into the seat in one smooth motion, conditioned response carrying the movement without thought.
The engine turns over in a low, controlled growl beneath me, vibration running up through the frame.
Cali stops beside me. She looks at the bike, then at me. There’s a flicker of something in her expression, not hesitation exactly, but consideration.
“You always this subtle?” she asks, one brow lifting slightly as she takes in the machine.
“It gets me where I need to go,” I reply.
Her mouth curves, just slightly. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No,” I agree, watching her. “It wasn’t.”
A moment stretches between us, thinner than it should be, carrying something unspoken from the gym that neither of us is acknowledging.
Her expression tightens for half a heartbeat before smoothing out again, like she’s made a decision and immediately locked it in a box she has no intention of opening.
“Fine,” she says. “Try not to kill me.”
“I won’t.”
She steps closer, and for a second, I think she’s going to argue again, going to default to distance the way she always does, but instead, she swings her leg over the back of the bike and settles behind me in one fluid motion, close enough now that the space she usually keeps is… gone.
Not by much, but enough.
Her hands come to my sides, not wrapping around me, just bracing, fingers splayed against my ribs like she’s maintaining control of the contact rather than giving into it.
The restraint is deliberate.
I notice it anyway.
Which is the problem.
The engine hums in that familiar way under us, something I’ve trusted longer than most things that still exist in this world. I’ve ridden through cities burning and cities asleep, through blood, silence, and everything in between, and it has never felt like this.
Not like something I am suddenly aware of.
Her presence shifts the balance.
Not physically.
It is something else.
I don’t move right away. There’s a fraction of a second where I am aware of the exact placement of Cali’s hands, the absence of her body against mine where it could be, the controlled distance she’s maintaining as if it matters.
Like it’s necessary.
Three hundred and fifty years of nothing, and now…
Now I notice this.
I don’t allow the thought to finish.
“Hold on,” I say instead.
Her hands tighten slightly in response, just enough to register. “I am,” she replies.
I don’t comment on the fact that she isn’t.
I don’t comment on the fact that I can tell the difference.
I simply pull out into the street.
The city tears past around us, all streetlights and cold night air, while the bike growls beneath me. I roll on the throttle and let the machine run, cutting through traffic with the same focus I bring to everything else.
Forward.
No hesitation or second-guessing, just the road opening up in front of me and the engine rumbling through my bones, but I am aware of her the entire time.
Of the way she shifts with the bike, matching the movement without needing instruction.
Of the way her hands stay at my sides instead of around me, maintaining that careful half inch of space she guards like it means something.
I notice it the way I notice everything about her.
Which is precisely the problem.
The warehouse comes into view too quickly, sitting back from the road like it doesn’t want to attract attention.
I slow the bike, the engine dropping from a roar to a controlled growl as I pull into the lot, gravel crunching under the tires.
The building looms ahead of us, dark except for a single light burning near the side entrance.
Silence drops in around us after the rush of the ride.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then Cali’s hands leave my sides, and she slides off the bike first, boots finding the pavement in one smooth motion—I notice her absence immediately. I keep the machine balanced beneath me until she’s clear, then cut the engine and step off after her.
She rolls her shoulders once, like she’s resetting her body after the ride, then looks at me. “You always ride like that?” she asks, brushing a loose strand of hair back from her face. “Or was that just for me?”
I glance at her. “You kept up.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It was the answer.”
Her mouth curves, not quite a smile. “Right. Because ‘yes, I drive like a maniac’ would’ve been too honest.”
“I don’t drive,” I say, already turning toward the building. “I arrive.”
She hesitates, then says, “That’s the worst thing you’ve said all night,” she mutters, falling into step beside me.
“And yet, you’re still here ready to fight beside me,” I point out.
“Debatable.”
We move toward the entrance, boots crunching over gravel, the quiet of the place settling in around us the closer we get. The air changes before we even reach the door, subtle at first, then sharpening into something that doesn’t sit right under the surface.
I reach it first, pushing it open.
The warehouse feels strange the second we step inside.
I feel it immediately, a stillness too deliberate for an empty building, the kind that comes from something being very recently disturbed and not yet settled again.
The air carries the chemical edge of old blood, the sharp metallic thread of iron, and beneath that, something I can’t immediately name, something synthetic and ritualistic that sits on my instincts.
Cali’s shoulders drop a degree, weight redistributed to the balls of her feet, her hand closing around the stake at her thigh without drawing it.
Ready, but not committed.
Smart.
The main floor is wrecked but not ransacked in the way thieves work.
That kind of damage has its own logic with shelves turned out for valuables, crates pried open and abandoned, an obvious hunger behind the mess.
This is different. Every crate has been opened, yes, but the contents aren’t scattered carelessly.
They’re sorted, examined, and replaced or set aside with a precision that reads like a method, like someone working through a list. The artifact cases have been moved, lids lifted, and inventory photographed by the scuff patterns in the dust. Someone was looking for something specific and searched this entire floor before either finding it or giving up.
I crouch beside a crate near the east wall, press two fingers to a boot print in the grime, feel the depth and the weight distribution. “More than one. Moving in formation.”
Cali is three paces ahead, reading the same evidence from the angle of a toppled shelving unit. “Coordinated… they came in knowing the layout.”
That lands the way it’s meant to. Only a handful of people know this floor plan, and none of them would send rogues.
We move deeper.
The narrow corridor at the back of the main floor leads to the old cold storage bay, and the smell thickens around us as we approach, the blood stronger now, and something underneath it that makes my jaw tighten.
Chemicals, organic material, the low, persistent hum of equipment that shouldn’t be running in a building that draws no registered power.
Cali pushes the door, and we both go still in the frame.
The cold storage bay has been converted into something that turns my breath into something cold and heavy.
Metal workbenches line the walls, every surface crowded with racks of glass vials, the contents dark and varied, some deep red, some almost black, some a rust-amber I recognize immediately as berserker blood from the bitterness it carries even from here.
Ritual equipment clusters at the center table, sigil-marked bowls, iron instruments, burned-down candles in colors that correspond to blood magic I haven’t seen practiced in generations.
And against the far wall, a row of cages, four of them, three empty and one with the lock recently forced from the inside, the metal bent outward with the kind of force that belongs to something desperate and goddamn enormous.
The cages are too small for anything comfortable, but just large enough to contain.
Cali moves through the scene with the same sharp focus she brings to everything else. Her eyes work constantly, taking it all in piece by piece before anybody gets the chance to disturb it. Every detail, angle, and clue somebody else would have walked straight past.
She’s done this too many times not to know better.
Cali crouches at the central workbench, turning a vial slowly in the light, watching the way the liquid inside catches, separates, then settles. She sets it back exactly where it was, fingers careful and precise.
Her attention shifts.
Not random.
Directed.
Something half hidden at the edge of the table catches her eye, tucked between two equipment cases as though it belongs there but doesn’t want to be seen.
She stills for a fraction of a second, then reaches. Her fingers slide into the narrow gap, brushing against worn leather before she closes her grip and draws it out.
A small journal.
Unmarked on the outside.
Used.
The edges are softened from handling, and the spine is creased, suggesting it’s been opened often and not stored. She turns it once in her hand, like she’s deciding whether she wants to know what’s inside.
Then she opens it.
The cover gives easily, and her eyes drop to the first page, then she reads.
But something in her face goes still.
Still, in a way that feels like everything just locked into place at once.
“Scar.” The way she says my name in that register is enough.
I cross to her in the time it takes for the syllable to land fully.
She turns the page toward me, and I read the handwriting, meticulous, antiquated, in a script I haven’t seen since the seventeenth century, and the name at the top of the first entry is Mordain’s.
The temperature in the room seems to drop another ten degrees, while every muscle in my body pulls tight.
Not from the cold.
But from whatever the hell is standing on the edge of my instincts, scratching at something old enough to know danger before it has a face.
Beside me, Cali’s attention snaps up. Her mouth parts like she’s about to say something.
A warning.
A realization.
I never find out which because the door behind us explodes inward.