Page 11 of Property of Scar

SCAR

The Next Day

It’s been twenty-four hours since something tore through this part of the city and left behind a mess that doesn’t belong.

Ash… and something older, something that clings to the brick and concrete like it’s dug in, like it’s not done being here yet.

I stop at the mouth of the alley and breathe it in, slow, steady, letting my senses do what they have been trained to do for longer than most of this city has been standing.

I peel it back, layer by layer, like stripping wallpaper off a wall you already know is hiding something you’re not going to like.

The city moves behind me, completely uninterested in what happened here.

The burn site is obvious, a broad, darkened ellipse scorched into the concrete near the far wall, the kind of mark that doesn’t come from an accidental fire or a spilled accelerant.

Whoever did this knew what they were doing.

Knew how much heat it took, how long to hold it, how to contain the spread so that the evidence was destroyed and nothing more, the kind of nothing more that takes practice to achieve. I crouch beside it, studying the edges where the concrete has fractured under the sustained heat, hairline cracks radiating outward in a pattern that tells me the temperature was well above what a basic accelerant could manage.

Professional. The word sits flat and cold in my chest.

Someone is running hunts in my territory, and the way they’re doing it screams training, money, and more importantly, experience. This isn’t some amateur getting brave with iron and a death wish. Every instinct I’ve spent centuries building coils tight and irritated in my gut, the way they always do when something moves through what’s mine without the basic fucking courtesy of a heads-up.

I get to my feet and pull the cold night air in deep, sorting through every scent and sound, then I stop.

It’s there.

Not just ash.

Not just the chemical bite of whatever burned through here.

Something warmer.

Something alive.

It threads through the cold air sharp enough to catch my attention, a scent that doesn’t belong to what’s left behind. It sits sharp against everything else, too clean and too real.

Blood like that always carries something different, something caught between worlds, never fully one thing or the other. It hits with that copper-sweet edge that shouldn’t work in a place like this or cut through the mess the way it does.

And the part of me that notices blood first reacts before anything else can catch up.

A sharp pull.

That inherited instinct.

Hunger shifting just enough to remind me it’s there.

I clamp down on it, hard, forcing the rest of my thoughts back into place as I properly track the scent this time.

Because whatever happened here, it didn’t just leave ash behind.

Someone bled in this alley.

Not much. A scratch, maybe. The kind of wound that would close in an hour on a creature with accelerated healing. The kind of wound that closes fast but not fast enough to leave no trace for someone who knows what they’re looking for.

Dhampir.

I say nothing out loud. There’s no one here to say it to, and the word lands harder in the silence anyway, settling somewhere between interest and the sharp edge of a problem I know is real. A dhampir working my streets, running hunts, cleaning up rogues with professional efficiency and enough fire to leave nothing behind but this scorched apology in the concrete—that’s not a coincidence I can forget about.