Chapter Fifteen
SCAR
The sound hits first, a violent, splintering crack that tears through the warehouse and shatters whatever fragile stillness had settled.
Wood rips free of its hinges in a spray of jagged shards and twisted metal, the entire frame buckling inward as the door slams against the far wall hard enough to leave a visible dent in the concrete.
Dust explodes into the air, thick and choking, catching the light in a suspended cloud that turns everything hazy for a fraction of a second.
I’m already moving before the debris settles.
Cali drops out of my peripheral vision in the same instant, her body lowering toward the nearest cover with the kind of instinct that doesn’t need instruction.
While I pivot into the open space, turning to face the breach with my weight already shifting into position, the shapes emerge through the cloud of shattered wood.
Rogue vampires.
For a split second, my brain tries to make them fit the pattern I know.
Frenzied, mindless, and driven by hunger.
Then they step through the wreckage in a straight line, eyes fixed forward, moving with the cold certainty of predators that know exactly where they’re going, as if they have focus and the ability to control.
A chill slides down my spine because rogues aren’t supposed to do that.
The first lands just inside the threshold, feet hitting the floor in a disciplined, balanced stance that absorbs the impact without wasting a single ounce of motion. His gaze lifts immediately, locking onto me as though he had already mapped out the room before he entered it.
The second doesn’t follow him directly. He angles wide, cutting left in a clean arc that opens the space and stretches the room, forcing repositioning.
The third comes in lower, faster, his trajectory already aligned with Cali’s last known position, closing the distance with calculated precision rather than blind aggression.
The fourth never fully enters. He remains at the doorway, just inside the fractured frame, his presence blocking the exit with quiet certainty, as though that position had been decided long before the door ever came down.
For a fraction of a second, every predator in the room focuses on the same target. Movement becomes restricted in ways that shouldn’t happen this quickly, shouldn’t happen without chaos, overlap, or miscalculation.
But there is none.
They don’t hesitate.
They don’t snarl.
They don’t rush.
They advance.
Every step is placed with intention. Every shift of weight is calculated. Every line of attack is already supported by the others before it even exists.
The first one reaches me before the dust has fully settled.
He is too fast. Not the reckless speed of something driven by hunger, or the erratic, violent surges I’ve seen in rogues before.
This is something else entirely. Something that adjusts mid-motion, that accounts for resistance before it meets it.
I bring my arm up to intercept, the movement clean and practiced, but he’s already shifting as I do, his body turning with mine, not reacting to the block but preempting it, forcing my strike to glance off a line he’s already abandoned.
My momentum carries me a fraction too far, and that’s all he needs.
The second one is already there.
I don’t see the hit coming.
One second, I’m moving, and the next, something rakes across my side hard enough to jerk the air from my lungs.
Pain flashes hot and immediate. Fabric tears, and my skin goes with it. The rogue’s sharp claws carve a line through my flank and keeps going, fast and clean, leaving a burst of heat in its wake that tells me exactly how deep it got.
My body reacts before my brain catches up. Every instinct I have tries to curl around the injury, protecting and shielding it.
But I force that reaction down and keep moving.
The only problem is that I can feel it now. The wet slide of blood spreading beneath my shirt, and the sting every time my torso twists.
The warmth running down my side registers.
Shit.
Blood.
Mine.
I can smell it immediately, and it sharpens everything. The world narrows, edges pulling into focus, every movement around me cutting clearer, the space tightening into something I can control.
The second closes in again, expecting hesitation.
Expecting weakness.
I give him neither.
Instead, I turn into it. Stepping forward instead of back, forcing the distance to collapse before he can use it, my injured side protesting with a sharp pull that I ignore as I drive my shoulder into his centerline, disrupting the angle he’s built.
Cali moves behind me, repositioning, and one of them breaks from the formation without hesitation, tracking her path with the same measured precision, not chasing, not reacting, but predicting, stepping into the line she’s about to take rather than the one she’s already on.
There’s no wasted motion.
No overlap.
No chaos.
Every angle is covered, and every exit is accounted for.
Every movement is answered before it finishes.
This isn’t how rogues fight.
Rogues are hunger, instinct, and destruction.
This is something that was trained to do precisely what they are doing.
And that realization lands as the first one comes at me again, faster this time, cleaner, more precise… and I understand, too late, that we are not the only ones who came here prepared.
Whatever Mordain put in those vials, some of it went into the things he kept in those cages.
There is no gap between the thought and the movement.
I go for the closest, intercept it before it closes the distance to Cali, meet its charge with a momentum redirect that uses its own speed to drive it into the metal workbench hard enough to collapse the frame.
Cali is already at my four o’clock, crossbow up, bolt through a rogue’s shoulder before it clears the doorway, and she follows it with her stake in a single fluid motion that leaves her hand without her eyes leaving me.
We move the way hunters who have fought beside each other for years move.
No orders or discussion, just instinct and violence.
I put the second rogue down hard, and I’m already moving before the body hits the floor, every sense keyed up and hunting for the next threat.
Something shifts behind me.
Fast.
Too damn fast.
And the air changes. A flicker of movement at the edge of my vision, just enough to put every predatory instinct I own on a collision course with it.
I spin out of the kill, boots grinding against broken concrete as I drive toward the intercept.
It should have been enough.
Should have put me right in its path.
But this bastard is quicker than the others.
Meaner too.
And as it explodes across the room, I realize it isn’t hunting me.
It’s hunting her.
I see it in the fraction of a second before contact, the rogue hitting Cali from the side.
At the same time, her attention is held by the fourth, its hands closing on her throat, impact carrying her backward into the wall hard enough that the shelving unit beside her groans and buckles.
She gets a hand up, starts to fight it off, but it’s stronger, pressing the advantage, and her feet are barely touching the floor.
Something happens in my chest.
It isn’t a decision, but something snaps loose inside me.
Five centuries of control, discipline, and restraint.
All gone.
The rogue launches at her, and I move. One second, and I launch across the room.
Next, I’ve got both hands on the fucker.
The impact is violent enough to tear him out of the air entirely.
We hit the far wall like a wrecking ball, smashing straight through drywall and steel studs in an explosion of dust, shattered plaster, and twisted metal.
There’s nothing controlled about it, just speed, rage, and pure, unadulterated violence, the kind that leaves holes in walls and bodies on the floor.
My hand closes around his throat and drives him back through the wreckage, bone and debris giving way under the force as his spine slams into the broken concrete. The impact fractures what’s left of the pillar behind him, dust bursting up around us, but I don’t slow, ease, or measure.
He moves to counteract.
Of course, he does.
His hand comes up fast, aiming for my wrist, trying to break the hold, but I’m already past the point where this is an exchange. Instead, I tighten my grip, fingers locking in, crushing down until I feel the structure of his throat give beneath my hand.
Not enough to end it, but enough to take his leverage.
His other hand strikes for my side, but I don’t avoid it. I absorb it and let it land. Let it mean nothing because he’s still looking past me.
Still tracking her.
That’s the mistake.
I step in closer, eliminating the last of the space between us, and slam him down again, harder this time, the floor cracking under the impact as his body hits.
“You’re done,” I growl, and there’s nothing measured left in it.
He bares his teeth at me, blood already working loose at the edges of his mouth, and for a split second I see it, the calculation, the attempt to reangle, to buy time, to survive.
I don’t give it to him.
My other hand comes up and drives forward, straight through the center of his chest.
There’s resistance—bone, muscle, structure—but I break through it anyway. I feel it give under the force, feel the exact moment his body stops fighting the intrusion and starts failing under it, the rhythm inside him collapsing into nothing under my hand.
His eyes snap to mine.
Too late.
I close my grip around what’s left, holding him together and tearing his heart free.
The body jerks once. Twice. Then it stills.
I don’t let go immediately. My hand is still buried in his chest when the body finally gives up the last of its resistance, the structure collapsing under my grip until there’s nothing left holding it together.