Mortals drank with a desperate, nervous edge, their laughter sounding forced even over the heavy throb of the music. Rogues moved through the crowd with an arrogance that bordered on rabid, no longer skulking in corners like scavengers but drifting openly among prey as though the city already belonged to them. Even the civilians lingering near the stone walls seemed uneasy, their eyes flicking instinctively toward the exits.
The entire Quarter felt restless.
Beings like them noticed restlessness.
Malakai tipped his chin subtly toward the far side of the club, where two rogues had cornered a trembling male near the bathrooms.
See that?
Dax followed his line of sight, the amusement fading from his face like ice under fire. Normally, rogues fed sloppily, driven by feral instinct and predatory hunger. They lunged. Grabbed. Tore through flesh in chaotic bursts like starving animals chasing the nearest vein.
These two weren’t behaving that way—and Dax recognised them from Sule’s description.
One stood guard at the mouth of the corridor, silent and watchful, while the other leaned close to the victim’s throat, whispering something low enough to make the human freeze in pure, absolute terror.
It wasn’t glamour. It wasn’t compulsion.
It was fear—deliberate, controlled, and fundamentally wrong.
Cole’s expression darkened, his gaze narrowing.
“That’s new.”
A waitress approached the booth, her hands shaking as she tried to hide the panic blooming in her chest. Her pulse fluttered visibly beneath the delicate skin of her throat as she stopped beside the table, a moth orbiting a flame she didn’t understand.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, her voice thin and breathless.
Malakai smiled at her, a gesture that held no warmth, only a sharp, predatory edge. Then one hand moved beneath the edge of the table.
Ask her what she knows.
“Actually, sweetheart,” Dax said, leaning forward, “maybe you can help us instead.”
Her heartbeat jumped harder, an instinctive reaction to the danger sitting in the shadows.
“Seen anything strange around here lately?” he asked, his tone deceptively casual.
The hesitation that crossed her face was a confession before she opened her mouth.
Dax braced his forearms on the table, eyes pinned to hers.
“Talk.”
Her gaze darted nervously around the nightclub before she lowered her voice to a ragged whisper.
“People have been disappearing.”
Cole straightened almost imperceptibly, every trace of distraction leaving him.
“Tourists?”
She shook her head quickly, her eyes bright with tears.
“Dealers. Girls. Street kids. People vanish for days, and then…” Her throat bobbed with unease. “Then they come back wrong.”
Malakai watched her mouth closely before his hands moved again.
Wrong how?
