Page 17 of Soulmarked (Hellbound and Hollow #1)

16

POINT OF NO RETURN

T he wind off the East River cut like knives, carrying the stink of old death and something worse. Ravensbrook Asylum loomed against Manhattan's neon glow like a bloody wound in the skyline, its Victorian towers reaching up like grasping fingers. Even from our rooftop perch three buildings away, I could feel the wrongness radiating from the place.

“I'm counting twenty-plus guards,” Skye's voice crackled through our earpieces. “Mixed bag of nasties, vamps, weres, and those Fetches from the church.”

“Any sign of ritual preparations?” I asked, methodically checking my arsenal. Silver rounds slid into magazines, each bullet etched with sigils old as sin. The familiar routine kept my hands busy while my mind ran through all the ways this could go sideways.

“Hard to tell. They've got equipment vans with Phoenix logos, but whatever they're unloading is shielded from my scanners.” A pause filled with rapid typing.

Beside me, Cade loaded his own weapon with similar rounds. His movements were precise, methodical – the kind of careful preparation I'd come to expect from him. Not that I'd been watching.

“Remember the plan,” I said to our assembled team, trying to sound like I wasn't making this up as we went along. “We're not here to stop them yet. We just need to confirm what they're building and get proof before we move.”

“And if they spot us?” Lex checked his own gear, designer suit somehow immaculate despite the grime of our surroundings.

“Then we show them why people still fear hunters.” I smiled, though there was no humor in it. “Alive or dead, they'll learn.”

“Always with the dramatic declarations,” Cade muttered, but I caught him watching me when he thought I wasn't looking.

“Are you two going to bicker all night?” Skye's voice held equal parts amusement and exasperation. “Because I can think of better uses for our comm channel.”

I ignored them, focusing on my final weapons check. The blade at my hip hummed with old magic. Stakes lined my boots, each one carved with runes that would make a vampire's death permanent. The gun at my shoulder held the special rounds I'd been saving, bullets forged in holy fire and quenched in demon blood.

“Here.” I tossed Cade a spare magazine. “Blessed hollow points. They'll punch through vampire armor.”

He caught it one-handed, examining the sigils with too much understanding for a federal agent. “These markings... they're old. Pre-Christian?”

“Older.” I watched him handle them with proper respect, noting how naturally it came to him. More secrets, more questions I couldn't afford to ask. “Try not to waste them. They're a bitch to make.”

“Touching,” Lex drawled. “You two are adorable when you're pretending not to care.”

“Shut it.” But there was no real heat in it. Lex had earned his place on this mission, even if his mouth would probably get him killed someday. “Next time I'm leaving you at home with a coloring book.”

“Target's moving,” Skye reported suddenly. “Northeast entrance. Four guards, all supernatural. They're escorting someone... shite.”

“What?” Cade and I asked simultaneously, then shared an annoyed glance.

“It's Chen. Dr. Sarah Chen. The one we thought was dead.”

My blood ran cold. Chen had been Phoenix's head researcher before her supposed murder. If she was here...

“She's not dead then,” Cade said, voicing my thoughts. “She's working with them.”

“Or being controlled by them.” I'd seen it before, vampires using thrall, demons possessing bodies. “Either way, she's our best lead on what they're really planning.”

“Agreed. We follow her, see what she's actually building in there.” Cade said, his eyes already scanning for the best approach. “We need to understand what they're trying to accomplish.”

“While trying not to get eaten by the army of monsters between us and her?” Lex grinned. “Sounds fun.”

“Remember,” I said again, checking my own gear one final time. “We're here for intel only. No heroics, no challenging the guards unless absolutely necessary.”

“Says the man carrying enough firepower to start a small war,” Cade shot back, a hint of a smile playing at his lips.

“It's called being prepared. You might want to try it sometime.” I patted the array of weapons. “Besides, you never know when you'll need to kill something twice.”

“It's called being paranoid.”

“It's called staying alive, Princess.” I checked my blade one more time. “And it's worked so far.”

“If you two are done flirting,” Skye cut in, “Chen's heading deeper into the building. Third floor, west wing. Looks like they're setting up some kind of equipment.”

I pushed down the urge to argue further with Cade. We had a job to do, personal issues be damned. “Right then. Lex, take the high ground. Cover our approach and watch for reinforcements. Skye, keep monitoring those energy readings.”

“Just try not to die. The paperwork would be hell.” Skye's voice carried a forced lightness that didn't mask their concern.

“Agent Cross.” I turned to Cade, keeping my voice professionally neutral. “You're with me. Think you can manage to follow orders for once?”

His smile was sharp enough to match mine. “Depends on the orders. Think you can manage not to stab first and ask questions never?”

“Jaysus, you're impossible. Anyone ever tell you that you think too much?”

“Someone has to do the thinking around here.”

But before I could respond with something appropriately cutting, movement at the asylum's entrance caught our attention. More guards emerging, these ones moving like they were puppets.

“Show time,” I muttered, checking my weapons one final time. “Try to keep up, fed.”

“Try not to get us both killed, hunter.”

“If this is like the other sites, they'll be preparing the ground for whatever ritual they're planning. That means sacrifices,” I managed to say, the familiar twist of anger in my gut at the thought of innocent lives being used as supernatural fuel.

“So what's the play?” Lex asked, serious now. “We go in quiet, gather intel, then what? Because if they're really doing blood rituals...”

“Then we stop them.” My smile felt more like baring teeth. “Permanently.”

“And if we can't?” Cade's voice carried an edge I was learning to recognize, the fed wrestling with hunter methods.

“Then we die trying.” I met his gaze steadily. “Unless you've got a better idea? Maybe we can reason with the blood-sucking monsters, talk about our feelings?”

The challenge hung between us, heavy with everything we weren't saying. Finally, he nodded slightly. “Lead on, hunter.”

We split into teams, Lex taking the east wing while Cade and I approached from the west. The asylum's halls stretched before us like open wounds, decades of pain and madness seeping from the walls. Our boots made no sound on broken tile, but every step felt watched.

“Place feels wrong,” Cade whispered as we cleared another corridor. Moonlight painted strange patterns through broken windows, making shadows move where they shouldn't. “Like it's alive.”

“It probably is, in its way.” I kept my voice low, tracking movement at the edges of my vision. “Places like this, they soak up suffering. Hold onto it. Makes them perfect for the kind of magic Phoenix is playing with.”

“You sound like you've seen this before.”

“Once or twice.” I didn't elaborate. Some nightmares were better left unshared.

We found the first sign we were right in what had been a treatment room. The floor was carved with intricate symbols that seemed to shift and writhe when viewed directly, angular sigils intertwined with curved glyphs that resembled broken vertebrae and shattered ribcages. The grooves pulsed with an obsidian liquid that absorbed rather than reflected the light, too dark and viscous to be paint.

“Skye,” I subvocalized into my comm. “You seeing this?”

“Whatever they're doing down there, it's interfering with my equipment. Be careful.” Their voice crackled with interference.

Cade moved to examine the symbols, and I had to fight the urge to pull him back. His fascination with supernatural elements would get him killed one day.

“These markings,” he murmured, crouching to study the wet grooves. “They're older than what we found at the church. More... primal somehow.”

“How'd you know that?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

He tensed slightly, then shrugged with careful casualness. “Research.”

“Right.” I didn't bother hiding my skepticism. “You got a PhD in freaky symbols I don't know about?”

A scream echoed from below, human, terrified, cut brutally short. We both moved instantly, weapons ready, falling into sync despite everything.

“That came from the basement level,” Cade said, already moving. “We need to?—”

“Stick to the mission.” I caught his arm, ignoring how the contact burned. “We're here for intel, not rescue.”

“There are people dying down there!” His eyes flashed with that righteous anger I was coming to recognize.

“There are always people dying.” I kept my voice hard, professional, though it killed me to do it. “But if we don't stop whatever they're doing, more will die. Sometimes you gotta make the hard call.”

I saw the struggle in his face. He nodded, though the tension in his jaw said this wasn't over.

We moved deeper into the asylum's guts, where the walls wept old pain and the shadows had teeth. Every corner held potential death, every room another piece of the horror Phoenix was building.

“This is wrong,” Lex's voice came through our comms, tight with tension. “East wing is covered in sigils too. They're not just preparing one ritual site, they're turning the whole building into some kind of focal point.”

“Makes sense,” Cade muttered, checking another corner. “The asylum sits on a confluence of ley lines. All that old pain, all that stored energy...”

“When did you become an expert on ley lines?” I couldn't help asking.

His look was answer enough: another time.

Movement ahead froze us both in place. Shadows shifted wrong, flowing like oil against the asylum's decaying walls. The sound of chanting drifted up from below.

We pressed against the wall, communicating silently through gestures honed by weeks of working together. Three guards ahead, moving in formation. Not human. The sort of things that made me reach for silver instead of lead.

“Incoming,” Lex's voice whispered through our comms.

Another scream echoed up the stairwell, the sound fracturing into multiple tones simultaneously. Cade tensed beside me, that federal conscience warring with tactical necessity. His hand twitched toward the stairs, and I caught his wrist before he could move.

Our eyes met in the darkness. His screamed rescue, mine argued mission. We were running out of time. The chanting was building, the wrongness in the air getting thicker with each passing moment.

Finally, he nodded. Mission first. We could save people by stopping whatever was being built, not by charging in half-cocked.

We moved like smoke down the stairs, years of training making our steps silent despite the arsenal we carried. The basement opened into what had once been a massive treatment chamber. What we found there made even my hardened hunter's instincts recoil.

The chamber sprawled impossibly large, bigger than the building above should allow. What looked like scientists moved between points of a massive pentagram etched into the floor, their bodies swaying in perfect synchronization like a single organism with multiple limbs. They glided rather than walked, feet barely seeming to touch the ground, joints bending at unnatural angles as they reached for instruments with fingers that stretched too long for their hands. Their white coats seemed to shift and ripple, like glamours struggling to maintain human form.

“Those aren't just possessed people,” Lex muttered beside us. “Witches. Old ones, by the look of it. The kind that traded their humanity for power.”

He was right. When they turned, their eyes glowed with unnatural light, and beneath their scientific disguises, I caught glimpses of markings that writhed across their skin like living things.

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” I breathed. “This is gonna be a fun night.”

Dr. Chen stood at the center of the ritual space, her body unnaturally still where moments before it had convulsed in violent spasms. The pentagram etched into the concrete had gone dark, its symbols now burnt black and smoking faintly. Only hours ago, it had pulsed with malevolent energy, now it was just ash and scorched stone, its purpose already fulfilled.

“We're too late,” Cade whispered, his gun trained on Chen's motionless form.

I tightened my grip on my blade, the familiar weight doing little to calm the dread pooling in my gut. “Ya think? I was hoping for a nice simple salt-and-burn, not... whatever this is.”

Chen's head snapped up with mechanical precision. Her neck cracked as it rotated too far, eyes opening to reveal an electric blue glow that cast unnatural shadows across her contorted face. A smile spread slowly, stretching her cheeks to breaking point.

“Hunters,” she said, but the voice wasn't hers. “How kind of you to witness my resurrection.”

Cade shifted beside me, shoulders squared despite the fear I could practically smell on him. “Who are you?”

“Who I am isn't important,” the thing wearing Chen's skin replied, examining her hands with detached curiosity. “What matters is what I can offer you, marked one.”

The temperature in the chamber plummeted. Frost crystallized along the edges of the burnt pentagram, spreading outward as the creature took a single step forward. Reality itself seemed to bend around it, colors bleeding wrong at the edges of my vision.

“We need to move,” I muttered, already calculating distances to the exits. Behind us, the witches who'd performed the ritual lay scattered on the floor, their bodies drained husks with expressions of ecstatic horror frozen on their faces.

“The boy doesn't even know what he carries,” Chen said, tilting her head at an impossible angle as she studied Cade.

Cade's face hardened, but I caught the flash of uncertainty in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

I moved closer to him, instinctively protective. “Don't listen to it. Demons lie. It's kinda their whole thing.”

“Sean...” The warning in his voice failed to mask the tremor.

A sound like cracking bones filled the chamber as Chen's form shifted, bones realigning beneath her skin. “Shall we educate him? Show him what true power looks like when it's not trapped behind walls of flesh and choice?”

Hidden panels slid open throughout the chamber, revealing twisted shapes that unfolded from impossible spaces. The Fetches moved like oil on water, their forms constantly shifting as they advanced.

“We need to move!” I grabbed Cade's arm, pulling him behind a concrete pillar as the first wave of creatures surged forward. “Now!”

We fought back-to-back, muscle memory from countless training sessions taking over. My blade whispered through the air, finding vital spots with practiced precision. Cade's gun barked beside me, each shot placed with deadly accuracy despite the chaos.

“Exits are sealing!” Lex's voice crackled through our comms. “Something's generating an energy barrier around the entire building!”

“Little late on the warning!” I snarled, ducking under claws that would have taken my head off, coming up to drive blessed silver into a Fetch's chest. “What is it with these things? Can't we ever catch a break?”

The Fetch dissolved into black smoke, but three more took its place, their forms shifting and adapting to our attacks with terrifying speed. I spun to avoid another strike, my silver-edged blade slicing through what might have been an arm before it reformed into something with too many joints.

These things were learning our moves, adapting to each attack faster than we could change tactics. My usual approach of silver blades dipped in holy water and decapitation strikes wasn't working—I'd take one down only to find the next had already adapted to defend against that exact attack. Silver wasn't holding them, blessed weapons barely slowed them down. We needed something more than my arsenal of weapons and brute-force killing techniques.

“Cade, any bright ideas?” I called out, slicing through another Fetch that got too close. “Now would be a good time for that big brain of yours to kick in!”

But he was focused on Chen, who now floated several inches above the scorched pentagram, arms spread wide as power crackled around her like dark lightning.

“This vessel,” she declared, voice resonating with unnatural depth, “will serve. For now.”

“Move!” Cade tackled me sideways as Chen gestured and the concrete where we'd stood exploded upward, twisting into spears that would have impaled us both. We rolled together behind a fallen support column, coming up ready as more Fetches poured into the chamber.

“Thanks for the save,” I managed between breaths, reloading my gun with practiced efficiency.

The creature inhabiting Chen radiated a power that felt primordial.

“I've been watching you, marked one,” Chen, no, the thing inside her, said, attention fixed on Cade with predatory focus. “Watching you run from what you are. What you were made to be.”

Cade's jaw tightened. “I'm not running from anything.”

I caught movement in my peripheral vision, a Fetch trying to flank us. My blade flashed out, catching it mid-leap and nearly severing its head. Black ichor sprayed across the concrete as it collapsed.

“Not now you're not,” I muttered, positioning myself slightly in front of him.

The creature wearing Chen laughed. “Such loyal dogs, these hunters. But they can't protect you from what's coming. From what's already begun.”

More Fetches closed in, their movements becoming more coordinated, more deliberate. They weren't just attacking randomly, they were herding us, forcing us away from the exits and toward Chen.

“Ideas?” I asked, reloading with practiced efficiency. “I'm running low on blessed ammunition, and these fugly bastards aren't staying dead like they should.”

“We need to exorcise whatever's inside her,” Cade replied, his eyes never leaving Chen's hovering form. “Drive it back where it came from.”

Chen's body twisted unnaturally as she tilted her head, blue eyes glowing with unnatural light. “Exorcise me?” She laughed, the sound echoing with multiple voices layered beneath her own. “This vessel is quite comfortable. Dr. Chen was so eager to understand what waits beyond. Now she understands all too well.”

“Oh, you've had quite enough time in this realm.” I reached for the flask of holy water in my jacket. “Back to hell you go, you blue-eyed freak.”

She gestured almost lazily, and the flask in my hand frosted over, the blessed water inside crystallizing to ice in an instant. The cold burned my palm, forcing me to drop it with a curse.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Your petty weapons cannot touch me,” she said, power crackling around her like a corona. “I am beyond such things now.”

Cade stepped forward, and something about his stance changed. The mark on his chest pulsed visibly through his shirt, resonating with whatever power the creature was emitting.

“You want me,” he said, voice steady despite everything. “Not them. Let them go, and we can talk.”

“Cade, don't...” I started, but he silenced me with a look.

“What are you doing?” I hissed. “We don't negotiate with monsters!”

The creature's electric blue eyes narrowed with interest. “And what would we talk about, marked one? Your purpose? Your potential? The destiny written in your blood before you were born?”

“About who marked me,” Cade replied. “About what it really means.”

I moved closer to him, not liking where this was heading. “We're not separating,” I growled. “Whatever this thing wants, we face it together.”

“How touching,” The creature said, amusement rippling through its layered voice. “The hunter thinks he has a choice.”

It brought its hands together with a sound like thunder, and reality fractured around us.

The concrete floor buckled upward, twisting like living tissue. The air itself seemed to tear along invisible seams, bleeding colors that defied natural spectrum. I caught a glimpse of Cade being thrown one way while I was hurled in the opposite direction, our unified defense shattered by forces that rewrote physics between one heartbeat and the next.

“Sean!” Cade's voice cut through the chaos as the floor beneath us gave way completely.

“Cade!” I shouted as we both plummeted into darkness, the collapsing structure sending us tumbling into the tunnels beneath the building. Debris rained down, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs.