Page 20

“What happened?”

“Not over the phone.” A pause, then quieter: “It's like Sullivan. But worse.”

“On my way,” I said, pocketing the hunter's card as I headed for the door. Whatever Sean's game was, it would have to wait.

Twenty minutes later, the morgue was quieter than usual when I arrived, the fluorescent lights buzzing at a frequency that set my teeth on edge. Dr. Martinez met me at the door looking more unsettled than I'd ever seen her.

“Three more came in last night,” she said without preamble. “Same signs as Sullivan.”

She led me to a row of bodies, each one showing that same bloodless grey pallor. The overhead lights flickered as we approached, and the temperature seemed to drop with each step.

“Something's wrong with these bodies,” Martinez said, pulling back a sheet. “And I don't just mean the obvious. My instruments keep malfunctioning. Digital thermometers show impossible readings. And watch this...” She held up a scalpel near one corpse's arm. The metal visibly corroded before our eyes.

“The tissue samples...” She shook her head. “It's like they're still degrading, even in preservation fluid. I've never seen anything like it.”

I examined the security footage she'd pulled up, showing the morgue over the past few nights. Shadows moved across walls in patterns that defied physics, always congregating around these specific bodies. In one frame, a dark figure seemed to watch directly into the camera, its form too tall, too wrong to be human.

“I can't put this in my report,” Martinez said quietly. “They'll think I'm crazy. But you... you see it too, don't you?”

I nodded slowly. “Keep the bodies isolated. Don't let anyone examine them alone.”

“You know what's doing this, don't you?”

I met her gaze. “Would you believe me if I told you?”

She glanced at the shadows moving impossibly on her security feed. “At this point? I'd believe anything.”

Hours later, I sat in my car outside my apartment building, turning Sean's card over in my hands. The streetlight above flickered erratically, and I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

The scene from the alley played through my mind again, Sean moving with practiced efficiency, taking down that creature like he'd been hunting his whole life.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to force supernatural horrors into bureaucratic boxes, writing reports about “unknown toxins” while people died.

Diana Sullivan's desperate eyes haunted me. How many others had I failed because I insisted on playing by CITD's rules? How many more would die while I pretended these cases could be solved through normal channels?

Three days, and four more bodies in the morgue.

Pride wasn't worth any more lives.

5

RELUCTANT ALLIANCE

The address on Sean's card led me to what looked like another abandoned industrial building in Brooklyn's warehouse district. If I hadn't been trained to spot the signs, I might have believed the façade. But the subtly reinforced door, the nearly invisible security cameras, and the whisper-quiet hum of a military-grade generator told a different story.

I pressed the buzzer, half expecting no response. Instead, the door clicked open without a word. Great. He'd been watching me approach.

Inside was like walking into a doomsday prepper's wet dream. Medieval weapons lined the walls alongside modified modern firearms, each piece meticulously maintained. The shelves held everything from spell components to what looked suspiciously like homemade explosives. UV grenades. Silver ammunition. Things that would get me arrested just for knowing about them.

The industrial loft itself was all exposed brick and steel beams, deliberately unfinished in a way that probably cost more than my annual salary. Everything had its place, arranged withthe obsessive precision of someone who lived and died by being prepared.

Sean leaned against a metal workbench, arms crossed over his chest. His dark eyes tracked my movement with predatory focus, taking in every detail.

“You showed.”

I met his gaze steadily. “You gave me your card.”

“That doesn't mean you had to be smart enough to use it.” His Irish accent was thicker than at the alley, like he was deliberately playing it up.