CHAPTER NINE
Davien
WE RODE THROUGH the city, racing the looming sunrise to the Ninth’s Skyward Tower.
It stood in the heart of the city—glass and steel rising into the early morning sky, its mirrored surface catching the first light of dawn and threatening us with it in cold, fractured reflections.
To anyone passing, it was just another corporate structure.
Finance, perhaps, or tech. Something important, something dull.
Humans walked past it every day without a second glance.
Which was precisely the point.
I slowed my motorcycle, following Marlette as we pulled into the underground access, the light of the city dulling as we descended beneath it. The air felt different down here, more controlled. Filtered.
Contained.
I came to a stop beside Marlette, cutting the engine without comment. For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then we dismounted in silence.
The entry point was seamless—no visible guards in uniform, no visible security. Just a smooth stretch of reinforced glass and steel that responded as we approached, parting without sound.
Permission granted.
We quickly made our way up onto the main floor.
The lobby was vast, open in design, all polished floors and towering tinted glass walls that allowed the city to remain visible at every angle. Filtered light poured in from the rising sun, casting long reflections across the immaculate surface.
We crossed the lobby without speaking. No one stopped us, but I was acutely aware of being seen.
Not by eyes alone. The building itself registered any and all presence, cataloguing it with its extensive surveillance tech.
The Ninth didn’t need walls to confine, its surveillance simply reminded you that you were already contained.
By the time we reached the security threshold, the atmosphere had shifted entirely. The glass gave way to smaller windows and darker materials—steel, matte surfaces, colder, more clinical lighting. The illusion of openness was stripped away step by step.
“Name?” came the voice as we stepped up to the checkpoint. No visible speaker as usual.
We gave our names then paused on bated breath.
“Proceed.”
The process was routine and we were well used to it. That didn’t make it any more pleasant though.
I removed my blade first, placing it on the recessed surface before me. The panel lit faintly beneath it, scanning, cataloguing. Marlette did the same beside me, her movements as precise as ever.
Firearms followed.
Everything had to be surrendered.
Accounted for. The body scan came next.
It moved through us rather than over us. A low, invasive pressure that pressed against bone, searching for irregularities, for anything out of place. It lingered just long enough to remind you that nothing here escaped scrutiny.
“Clear.”
The word released us and we retrieved our weapons and moved on.
As much as we both loathed the Ninth headquarters, neither of us had any interest in travelling all the way out of the city to the private safe house we’d been working out of. And it made sense to stay close.
We made our way down the stairs into the belly of the building, and by the time we’d made it to the residential level, the city was gone.
No windows, no natural light, only structure and control.
Corridors stretched out before us, identical in design, lined with doors that bore no names, no markings. Just numbers. They were temporary quarters, somewhere to get some shut eye, but nothing more.
Barry—a young turned one—ran up to us with a nervous energy. “Oh good, you’re both here, that makes my life easier.”
I didn’t even want to ask. “Why?”
“The boss wants you in his office pronto. Sent me out to find you.”
“Did he say why?” This was the last fucking thing we needed. What could Valerius possibly want? We typically stayed out of his way, and therefore his wrath and I much preferred it that way.
“Didn’t say, but I wouldn’t keep him waiting, you know what he’s like.”
Everyone knew what he was like.
I nodded, and patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
Marlette and I made our way through the halls of the Ninth to the rear elevator—the only one that went up to the level where Valerius’s office was.
The Ninth, as it had been named by Valerius, was a vampire stronghold in this world.
Established so that every vampire answered to it, with no exceptions—the official story was that we were here to protect the humans of these lands from vampires.
Keeping our own in check so to speak. But the unofficial reason was far more sinister.
We entered the lift without pause. It recognised us immediately. No buttons, no input. The doors sealed and we ascended. The doors reopened on his floor. The room was surrounded with floor to ceiling windows. A reminder that there was nowhere to hide.
I stepped into the office first, Marlette a second behind me.
The boss stood facing the vast city below as he watched over it like some overlord, his hands placed casually in his perfectly tailored suit trousers.
Dark hair, kept immaculately in place, framed a face too composed to ever be mistaken for careless.
Everything about him was strictly controlled.
Expensive in a way that went beyond clothing.
His authority wafted off of him in a way that didn’t need to be spelled out.
It was just there. He didn’t need to assert it because it was already understood as fact.
Valerius Adenauer, the youngest yet most ruthless prince of the old vampire kingdom.
He and I had never seen eye to eye, he knew it, and I knew it. He tolerated me because of who my maker was and his importance back home. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me though, it just meant he needed a really really good reason to do it, and I refused to give him one.
He turned with a smile plastered across his features, teeth showing and everything. And his eyes, sharp and assessing, missed nothing. They lingered just long enough to unsettle, never long enough to read. It was meant as intimidation, but he’d have to do better than that to rattle me.
“Take a seat, detectives.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. He had a love for using human terminology and job descriptions, when what we really were was hunters and executioners of our own kind.
Marlette and I each took a seat in the chairs facing his office desk while he relaxed back into his leather high back chair.
A pause followed—measured and deliberate. The kind that stretched just long enough to remind you that he dictated the pace of every interaction, no matter how insignificant it might appear.
“I trust your night has been… illuminating.”
There was something in the way he said it. Not quite a question. Not quite a statement.
“Two scenes,” I replied evenly. “Unrelated. One consistent with the previous incidents. The other—rogue activity.”
“Ah.” He shifted slightly as though considering that. “Chaos and absence, arriving so conveniently within the same span of hours. How… obliging.”
His gaze settled back on us then, as though trying to read the unsaid.
Marlette remained silent beside me, her attention fixed on him, unflinching.
“And you’re sure that’s all the second was?”
“It wasn’t the same,” I said. “The second was careless. Obvious. Nothing like the others.”
“Yes,” Valerius said softly. “Careless things often are.”
A pause.
“I have it on good authority,” he went on. “That an individual with a high power level has evaded the Iron Fangs. Sounds like that may be your unknown second.”
He let the words sink in before continuing. “As I’m sure you understand, this individual must be caught and dealt with swiftly. And this is to remain under wraps.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed, although what he had said made no sense.
He was implying that the second scene was linked to the unknown individual who had been taunting us all summer, when the evidence suggested otherwise.
I feared what he wasn’t telling us, but that in itself only made me more certain that ‘Ailsa’ was more important than we’d first believed.
Not to mention people didn’t just escape the Iron Fangs.
They were an elite unit of ruthless soldiers directly under the command of the Adenauers.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that he had an ulterior motive.
I felt Marlette’s attention shift slightly, letting me know that she too felt confused by his words. If anything, an unknown like that would be more suited to be the one responsible for the string of crimes without the scent.
Why was he attempting to steer our attention to Ailsa?
He glanced back at me then, faint amusement in his expression.
“On your way then,” he said in a flat tone gesturing to the elevator door as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt with care, returning to the stack of papers on his desk. “And Mr. Sartini,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “don’t disappoint me.”
We said nothing more after that. The corridor felt narrower on our way back, the quiet heavier. The door sealed behind us with a soft finality when we arrived back in our accommodations, and for a moment neither of us moved. Bewilderment sat where certainty should have been.
Urgency began to take hold, my mind turning over fragments that refused to fit together. This had evolved into more than a hunt, and come nightfall, I intended to start finding some answers. Not just to resolve the case, but to find her. And find out what Valerius‘s interest in her was.