Chapter 37
Rhen stalked out of the alley first, his body held so tightly under control that every step became a battle against the violence threatening to break free.
The hunt had not ended. It had merely changed shape.
When he found the heretic again, there would be no second opportunity to escape.
Beyond the alley, the French Quarter stretched beneath the rain, wet and gleaming. Streetlights shivered across puddles, while neon reflections bruised the pavement with color. The scent of blood clung to the night, copper and iron hanging heavily enough in the air to stir hunger even in males already drowning in it.
Rhen led without looking back.
Cole fell into position just behind his shoulder, his massive presence moving like a wall through the narrow streets. Malakai remained on the opposite side, quieter and watchful, his earlier humor replaced by the cold calculation that emerged whenever the world became a problem requiring a violent solution.
“Where do you think he’s running?” Cole asked.
“It does not matter,” Rhen replied. “I will find him.”
Malakai caught Cole’s eye and signed,He will. He also appears determined to die in the process.
“It will catch up with him eventually,” Cole said, although his attention remained on the surrounding corners, balconies, and rooflines.
Rhen’s focus never shifted.
The heretic had left something behind. It was neither a footprint nor an ordinary scent, but a faint residue Rhen could taste in the wet air: the sour burn of spellwork and the oily wrongness of magic sharpened into a weapon.
It threaded through the Quarter like a trail intended for monsters.
They followed it into narrower streets, where the buildings closed around them and the shadows deepened. The city grew quieter with each turn, the absence of ordinary sound feeling increasingly deliberate.
Rhen stopped so abruptly that Cole nearly struck his back.
His nostrils flared.
The blood hanging in the air was fresher than what remained from the earlier massacre. Its warmth had not yet faded.
“You smell it?” Cole asked.
Rhen was already moving.
They rounded the corner and found a male slumped against the wall of a narrow side passage. His head rested at an unnatural angle, and his limbs had folded beneath him as though someone had dropped the body without care.
Malakai crouched and pressed his fingers against the blood-soaked clothing. He looked toward his brothers.
Fresh. Whoever did this is still close.
The dead male’s throat had been torn open. It was not the wound of a clean feeding but a savage destruction of flesh that had allowed blood to pool beneath him faster than the rain could carry it away. His hands remained clawed against the stones, and terror had frozen his eyes open.
Rhen lowered himself beside the corpse.
This was not simply the work of a starving rogue.
The violence had been arranged to communicate something.
Malakai examined the clothing before signing,One of ours?
“Perhaps.”
Rhen touched the blood with two fingers. Beneath the copper scent lay the chemical bitterness of burned herbs and oil.
