Chapter 1 #2
The city unfolded around me in fragments—a corner store with a flickering sign, a bus stop where no one waited, an alley that smelled like garbage and regret.
I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know where I'd been.
I just walked, letting my feet carry me, letting the streets decide for me because I couldn't trust my own mind to choose.
Gabriel.
Where are you?
Why did you leave?
Was it something I did? Something I said? Something I became?
"You're ready."
For what?
The coffee shop was small and nearly empty.
I sat in the corner with a cup of something bitter and watched the door. The barista was young—college age, maybe—with pink streaks in her hair and a nose ring that caught the light. She smiled at me once, then stopped when she saw my face.
What did she see?
What did I look like?
Was it the hollow eyes? The way I kept touching my throat? The way my hands shook when I lifted the cup?
I didn't know. I couldn't see myself the way others saw me. I couldn't hold onto a single version of my own face long enough to recognize it.
The door opened. A man walked in—tall, dark hair, eyes that scanned the room too quickly. My hand moved to my waistband before I could stop it, fingers brushing the knife's hilt.
Predator.
Or prey?
He ordered coffee and left without looking at me. My heart was hammering. My palms were sweating. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this afraid of nothing.
Or maybe it wasn't nothing.
Maybe I was being followed.
Maybe someone knew what I'd done.
Maybe someone was coming to make me pay.
I left the coffee untouched and walked back out into the grey.
The warehouse district was quiet at this hour.
I'd found it by accident—or maybe on purpose, maybe my feet had known where they were going even when my mind didn't. The buildings were old, brick and corrugated steel, their windows dark and their doors padlocked.
Graffiti covered the walls in layers, years of it, names and dates and messages that had lost all meaning.
I walked until I found the address.
Adams Street. A warehouse at the end of a dead-end road. The number was painted on the loading dock in faded yellow letters—almost invisible, almost gone, almost like someone wanted it to stay hidden.
11 PM.
That was hours from now. But the door was already open.
I stood in the shadows and watched.
Someone was inside.
I could see the flicker of a flashlight through the grime-coated windows. A silhouette moving between the aisles. Waiting. Hunting. Preparing.
For me?
Or for someone else?
My hand found the knife again. The ceramic blade was cool against my palm, familiar in a way that made my chest ache. Gabriel had given this to me. Gabriel's hands had placed it in mine. Gabriel's voice had told me how to use it, where to cut, how deep to go.
"A good girl knows how to end things cleanly."
I crossed the street.
The door opened with a whisper of rust and neglect, and the darkness swallowed me whole.
I didn't remember leaving the warehouse.
I didn't remember my hands finding the man's throat.
I didn't remember the knife sliding between his ribs, the wet gasp of his last breath, the way his eyes went wide and then went empty.
I didn't remember dragging his body into the corner, covering it with a tarp, wiping the blade clean on my jeans.
I didn't remember any of it.
But my hands were red when I came back to myself.
I was standing in an alley two blocks away, my back against a brick wall, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The knife was in my hand. The blade was wet. My palms were slick with something warm that was already starting to cool.
Whose blood?
Whose life?
Whose death had I just made?
I looked down at my hands and didn't recognize them. The woman who owned them was someone I didn't know—someone who killed without remembering, someone who hunted without knowing why, someone who was falling apart in slow motion and couldn't find the ground.
Gabriel.
Where are you?
Why aren't you here?
Why did you leave me alone with this?
The knife fell from my fingers. It clattered against the asphalt, and the sound echoed through the alley like a gunshot. I stared at it for a long time—the blade still wet, the hilt still warm—and I couldn't make myself pick it up.
"You're ready."
For this?
For becoming this?
For waking up in motel rooms with blood you don't remember spilling?
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold ground, my knees drawn up to my chest, my hands pressed flat against the asphalt.
The blood was drying on my palms. It would flake off soon, leaving traces I'd find later, in a motel room I didn't remember checking into, on hands I didn't remember washing.
The phone buzzed in my pocket.
I didn't look at it. I already knew what it would say. Another address. Another name. Another hunt I wouldn't remember until it was over.
Gabriel.
I'm coming.
I don't know where you are. I don't know why you left. I don't know if you're alive or dead or somewhere in between.
But I'm coming.
And I won't stop until I find you.
I pushed myself to my feet. Picked up the knife. Wiped it on my jeans. Walked back toward the street where the sun was finally rising, painting the sky in shades of gold and pink and the color of old blood.
The phone buzzed again.
I didn't look.
I already knew where I was going next.
I just didn't know why.