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“Jaysus,” Sean muttered, leaning over my shoulder to look at the screen, his breath smelling faintly of coffee and the whiskey I knew he kept in his flask.

“Same as Reeves. That guy had his office decked out with crosses and those cheesy inspirational posters.

Called his clients 'flocks' according to his secretary.”

“More than that,” I said, opening another tab, accessing files Skye had forwarded.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, piecing together the digital breadcrumbs of a life that had ended in horror.

“Both men increased their church donations dramatically in the last three months. Moore was giving almost forty percent of his income to the church.”

“Forty percent? That's not tithing, that's financial suicide.” Sean whistled low, grabbing a beer from the mini-fridge, the cap making a satisfying hiss as he popped it off against the edge of the table.

I nodded, scrolling through bank records Skye had somehow acquired—our tech genius with questionable ethics but unquestionable loyalty.

“He took out a second mortgage last month.

Listed it as 'investment opportunity' on the application, but the money went straight to the church.

Special fund called 'Revelation Project. '”

The mark on my chest throbbed at those words, a dull burn that spread through my ribs. I pressed my palm against it, trying to quiet the sensation. The memory of flames, of screams, lingered at the edges of my consciousness.

“You okay?” Sean's voice cut through the fog, concern barely masked beneath gruffness.

“Fine,” I lied, focusing back on the screen. “Just thinking.”

I clicked through more records—credit card statements, phone logs, email headers. The picture emerging was troubling. “Both Moore and Reeves were communicating with someone via burner email accounts. Sending messages at odd hours, mostly around 3 AM.”

“Witching hour,” Sean muttered, taking a pull from his beer.

“Exactly. And they were both researching obscure religious texts. Gnostic gospels, Mesopotamian prayer rituals, pre-Christian worship practices.” I pulled up Moore's search history, highlighting patterns.

“Look at this sequence. He starts with standard Bible study, then moves to apocryphal texts, then to truly ancient stuff. Like he was looking for something specific. Something older than Christianity.”

Silence settled between us, heavy with implication. The ceiling fan clicked rhythmically above, casting slowly rotating shadows across the room. Outside, a car alarm went off briefly, then fell silent. The world continuing its mundane dance, oblivious to the horrors lurking in its shadows.

Then Sean exhaled, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “Shit.”

Our eyes met, and I knew he'd reached the same conclusion I had. This wasn't random. Someone—or something—was hunting these men down, selecting them with purpose. Marking them. Changing them. And then killing them in a very specific way.

“We need to see the church,” I said, already closing the laptop, the information stored and cataloged in my mind. “And talk to whoever's running it. Find out what kind of 'Revelation Project' turns devoted family men into obsessed zealots.”

Sean nodded, checking his gun with practiced efficiency before tucking it into his waistband.

The familiar ritual was oddly comforting—the click of the magazine, the smooth slide of metal, the certainty of a weapon that would do exactly what it was designed to do.

Unlike the supernatural, which played by its own twisted rules.

“And we need to figure out what made these poor bastards special enough to die,” he added, grabbing his jacket. “And how many more are on the hit list.”

The wall of our motel room had transformed into an impromptu investigation board—crime scene photos taped haphazardly beside newspaper clippings, red string connecting related elements, maps marked with victims' homes and the church, a timeline scrawled in my cramped handwriting on motel stationery.

The kind of thing that would make a normal person call the police.

The kind of thing we'd done dozens of times before during our months working together.

I stood back, trying to see the pattern hidden in the chaos. The ceiling light flickered intermittently, casting strange shadows across our work. Every man killed had deep ties to their faith. More than just belief—obsession. Fanaticism.

“Four victims in twelve days,” I said, tapping the timeline we'd constructed with the capped end of a marker. “Martin Reeves, Joseph Daniels, William Thornton, and now Zac Moore.”

Sean handed me a beer from the mini-fridge, popping the cap off his own with his ring—a trick he'd perfected years ago and never tired of showing off. The familiar gesture was almost comforting. Almost normal.

“Who would target guys like this?” he asked, taking a long pull from the bottle, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Religious hate crime? Some satanic cult thing?”

A laugh escaped me, bitter and hollow. “Satanists are mostly harmless atheists with a flair for the dramatic. This is . . .” I gestured at the crime scene photos, the burned-out eye sockets captured in clinical detail. “This is something different.”

My fingers tightened around the beer, the cold glass grounding me as my thoughts raced down familiar paths. Analysis, connection, theory. The detective work that had kept me sane all these years, that had given purpose to a life that might otherwise have been lost to darkness.

“Someone with a grudge. Or something.” The words hung in the air between us, loaded with all the supernatural horrors we'd faced over the months we'd been working together. Vengeful spirits. Ancient gods. Demons. Things from beyond the veil, beyond understanding.

A siren wailed somewhere in the distance, rising and falling like a cry for help. My head throbbed in rhythm with it, a counterpoint to the persistent burning of the mark on my chest.

I turned back to my laptop, perched precariously on the rickety motel desk, its screen the only reliable source of light in the dim room.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, flipping through news reports and old case files we'd compiled over months of hunting.

The beer sat untouched beside me, condensation beading on the glass and pooling at its base, as I searched for similarities, precedents, anything that might make sense of what we were seeing.

While Sean made the call, pacing the length of the small room, I continued digging through church records, looking for anything unusual.

Recent events, special services, visiting speakers.

The page was generic—potluck announcements, choir practice schedules, Bible study groups.

Normal. Safe. Until I saw it—a prayer revival held three weeks ago, led by a visiting Franciscan monk named Brother Michael.

“Look at this,” I said, pointing to the screen when Sean finished his call. “'Experience the divine through ancient prayers rediscovered.' Says here Brother Michael brought 'sacred texts recently uncovered in a monastery in Northern Turkey.'”

Sean leaned in, squinting at the small print, his shoulder pressing against mine. “You think our victims went to this thing?”

“I'd bet my life on it.” I pulled up an attendance list Skye had sent from the church records, obtained through means I didn't want to know about.

“Look at the date—exactly one day before Reeves started posting all that religious content, three days before Daniels took out a loan to donate to the church.”

“Eight others who might be next on the chopping block,” Sean finished, straightening up, already reaching for his phone again.

While he called Skye back with this new information, I stared at the grainy photo of Brother Michael on the church website. Something about his face seemed off—his eyes too intense, his smile not quite reaching them, an asymmetry to his features that was subtle but jarring.

I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate, to access memories that felt just out of reach.

The mark burned hotter now, responding to something in the investigation, a painful throbbing that matched my elevated heartbeat.

The symbol from the prayer book floated behind my eyelids, that stylized eye surrounded by wings or flames.

And then it clicked. The ancient texts from Northern Turkey. The burned-out eyes. The systematic targeting of the devout.

“Northern Turkey,” I said suddenly, my voice cutting through Sean's phone conversation. He held up a finger, finishing with Skye before turning to me.

“What about it?”

“That's not just any monastery region. That's where ancient entities were first bound.” I pulled up ancient religious texts on my laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard.

“The Book of Enoch, the Grigori legends. Ancient beings sent to observe humanity but who began to interfere, to teach forbidden knowledge.”

Sean moved closer, his expression sharpening. “And?”

“According to legend, they were bound beneath the earth in the mountains of what's now Northern Turkey. Imprisoned for revealing divine secrets to mortals.” I looked up at him, the pieces finally clicking into place.

“What if Brother Michael didn't just find ancient texts? What if he found something that was meant to stay buried?”

The mark on my chest flared with sudden, searing heat, and I gasped. The room seemed to tilt around me, and for a moment, a voice echoed in the recesses of my mind—neither male nor female, neither kind nor cruel, but ancient beyond measure.

“They see all. They judge all. They come when called, but the price of their gaze is sight itself.”

The voice faded, leaving only the echo of understanding. I blinked, forcing myself back to the present, sweat beading on my forehead.

“They burn out the eyes,” I whispered, the revelation hitting me like a physical blow.

“Not to kill, but to erase the memory. To make sure no one can bear witness to what they've seen.

These aren't random murders—they're cover-ups.

Someone released something, and it's eliminating anyone who saw it.”

Sean's face had gone pale. “The revival. They all saw it at the revival.”

I nodded, my throat tight with understanding. “And now it's hunting them down, one by one, erasing the evidence of its presence.”

“No,” I said firmly when Sean suggested we split up to cover more ground, the word escaping before I could think about it. The vehemence in my voice surprised us both.

For a moment, something stirred in my chest—not the mark, but something deeper.

A flutter of panic at the thought of Sean facing this thing alone, of losing him again after just getting him back.

The emotion felt foreign, muted, like trying to grasp smoke.

I remembered feeling this way once, remembered what it was like to care so deeply it became a physical ache.

But now it was just an echo, a shadow of what I'd once been capable of feeling.

Still, even diminished, it was enough to know I couldn't let him go alone.

“Whatever this is, it's powerful,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. “We stay together.”

Sean studied my face, something shifting in his expression. “Alright. Your call.”

I grabbed the car keys from the nightstand, trying to ignore the way the mark throbbed beneath my shirt, a steady pulse that seemed to echo with warning. The strange flutter of emotion had already faded, leaving me wondering if I'd imagined it entirely.

“I need to grab something from the trunk,” Sean said, checking his backup piece, a small revolver he kept for emergencies. “Holy water, salt rounds. The works.”

I nodded, grateful for his practicality. Sean didn't waste time on existential dread—he prepared. He fought. He survived. It was one of the many reasons we'd made it this far.

“I'll pull the car around,” I said, opening the door to the cool night air.

Minutes later, we were both settled in the Impala, weapons bag in the backseat, the engine humming beneath us. Sean buckled his seatbelt and looked over at me expectantly.

“Then what are we waiting for?” he asked, loading rock salt rounds into his shotgun. “We've got people to save and a monster to gank.”