Jacob’s Perspective
The sll in the motel room was a mix of mildew and cheap industrial cleaner that made the back of my throat itch. I sat in the wobbly chair by the window, watching Celena. She was curled on the edge of the bed, ticulously cleaning her dagger under the sickly yellow glow of the lampshade. The blade caught the light in cold, sharp arcs. Her movents were focused, but I knew her mind was miles away. A faint frown creased her brow.
She was worrying. I needed to distract her, or at least remind her I was right here, no matter what.
I was about to say sothing stupid—maybe ask if she wanted to brave the plastic-looking donuts from the vending machine downstairs—when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Not a call. A text. From Lily. The sound made both of us look up, our eyes eting across the dim room.
"Lily," I said, pulling out the phone and unlocking it. Celena imdiately set her dagger down and moved to my side.
The ssage was long, broken into segnts.
The first part was about the witches. It wasn’t just the ones we’d scented. An entire sisterhood, an ancient lineage from the East Coast, had inserted itself into this ss. The reason? The bastard wearing Brett’s skin... had provoked them. The *how* made the hairs on my nape stand up: it had sohow directly invaded their scrying visions or dream-walks, issuing a vicious, specific threat to at least three separate covens. It proclaid it would "sate its hunger with the souls of a hundred witches."
"My god..." Celena breathed the words beside , her fingers unconsciously digging into my arm.
The second part was about Rose and Maya. They, too, had received explicit orders from their "Lineage Elders." The wording was severe, forbidding them from appearing anywhere near our current location, offering any direct or indirect aid, or even communicating with us about this matter. Violation ant being cast out. "This is a witch matter now, and a highest-level warning," Lily’s ssage read. "Their hands are tied. They’re deeply unsettled."
The third part was reminder and warning. Lily stressed the situation had beco unimaginably complex and dangerous. Witchcraft conflicts didn’t play by physical rules. Range, effect, fallout—all unpredictable. She reiterated, in no uncertain terms, that if we sensed anything beyond our ability to handle, we were to abort. Imdiately.
I set the phone down on the wobbly little table. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the dull *thump* as the ancient air conditioner compressor kicked on.
The night outside the window was thick, like spilled ink.
Celena was quiet for a long ti. Then she lifted her head. Her eyes in the yellowish light were dark pools. "Jacob," she said, her voice soft. "Back when I... after I perford that ritual to summon a witch, I t a woman. In a shop."
I nodded for her to continue.
She wet her lips, which had gone dry. "She told an old story. About three witches of the wood."
"You think... that’s connected to what’s in Brett?" she asked, though the answer was already written on her pale face.
"One hundred percent," I said, the words flat and final. "This isn’t a coincidence. What we’ve stumbled into... it’s no simple possession."
"Then what is it?" A fine tremor ran through her voice.
"I don’t know." I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. "Witchcraft. Legends. Ancient entities... This is so far outside my wheelhouse, outside anything a wolf normally deals with."
A cold, creeping sense of helplessness wrapped around , vine-like and suffocating.
Celena walked over and took my hand. Her palm was cool, but her grip was firm. "But we’re here, Jacob." Her eyes found mine, the fear hardening back into resolve. "Whatever it is, it’s wearing Brett. We need the answer."
I squeezed her hand back, giving a sharp nod. Yeah. We were here. For answers. For closure. Even if the path ahead led into pitch-black nothingness.
It ca a little after two in the morning.
A low, deep vibration, almost below the range of human hearing, shuddered up from the ground itself—or maybe through the very air. Like a giant beast turning over in its sleep far beyond the horizon.
My wolf let out a warning growl in the depths of my mind. Every muscle in my body tensed, coiling into a combat-ready state. Beside , Celena shot upright in bed, her eyes wide and glittering with alarm in the dark.
The vibration lasted only seconds, but its echo seed to hang in the air. Then, half the block woke up.
We heard doors slam shut nearby, muffled shouts, the sudden roar of engines and the shriek of tires on asphalt. A few beams of headlights swept wildly across the night sky before being cut off.
Then, gunfire tore the silence apart.
It ca from the direction of the old factory district. Not sporadic shots. A fierce, sustained firefight—the stutter of automatic weapons, the sharper crack of handguns, punctuated by short, agonized screams.
Flashes of light, more like strange chemical flares than normal fire, flickered from the factory zone. But more noticeable was the sll that rushed in on the night air—the fresh, coppery tang of new blood, and... sothing else. A wild, feral scent that made my gums itch.
"Werewolves?" Celena whispered, having caught it too.
"Not quite," I muttered, nostrils flaring as I tried to parse it. "Rogues. No pack scent. Just wilderness and... madness." Goddammit. This ss just got ssier.
We didn’t go outside. Charging out there now would be suicide. We sat with our backs to the wall, weapons within easy reach, and waited in the dark.
Ti crawled toward dawn. When the eastern sky finally began to lighten to a sickly grey, the world outside had gone utterly quiet.
"Ti to move," I said, my voice raspy from the long silence. We had to see before full daylight brought more people.
Celena nodded, her eyes clear and sharp.
We slipped out of the motel like ghosts, leaving the car behind. On foot, we moved through the cold, damp air of early morning, skirting toward the factory district. The closer we got, the thicker the slls beca—blood, cordite, and that other, indescribable scent, like ozone and burnt, rotting flowers.
The scene was more... fragnted than the highway battlefield yesterday. Walls were gouged with huge claw marks and cratered by impacts. The ground was scorched in strange, radial patterns that looked painted with black fire. Several bodies lay twisted at impossible angles—so in tactical gear, so in ragged clothes. A few looked torn apart by sheer brute force. Others were physically intact, but with dark blood dried around their eyes, nose, and mouth, faces frozen in pure terror. We also saw piles of fine ash, vaguely human-shaped, scattering at the slightest breeze—the remnants of soone utterly unmade by magic.
We picked our way carefully, avoiding the areas where the slls of violence and power were strongest, sticking to the edges.
Finally, behind the collapsed skeleton of a brick building, we found a row of massive, heavily rusted drainage pipes, each wide enough for a grown man to duck into. At the mouth of one pipe, several scraps of torn, dark fabric were scattered.
Celena and I locked eyes. Holding our breath, we crouched down, leaning close to the pipe’s dark, gaping entrance.
A wave of air washed out, carrying the scents of wet rust, damp earth, and... him.
Brett. I was a hundred percent certain. And woven tightly through that familiar scent was another, impossible to ignore—a deep, gut-chilling rot.
We’d found his trail. But what we’d found seed to confirm the worst of our fears, not dispel them.
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