Page 63 of Property of Scar

But from whatever the hell is standing on the edge of my instincts, scratching at something old enough to know danger before it has a face.

Beside me, Cali’s attention snaps up. Her mouth parts like she’s about to say something.

A warning.

A realization.

I never find out which because the door behind us explodes inward.

Chapter Fifteen

SCAR

The sound hits first, a violent, splintering crack that tears through the warehouse and shatters whatever fragile stillness had settled. Wood rips free of its hinges in a spray of jagged shards and twisted metal, the entire frame buckling inward as the door slams against the far wall hard enough to leave a visible dent in the concrete. Dust explodes into the air, thick and choking, catching the light in a suspended cloud that turns everything hazy for a fraction of a second.

I’m already moving before the debris settles.

Cali drops out of my peripheral vision in the same instant, her body lowering toward the nearest cover with the kind of instinct that doesn’t need instruction. While I pivot into the open space, turning to face the breach with my weight already shifting into position, the shapes emerge through the cloud of shattered wood.

Rogue vampires.

For a split second, my brain tries to make them fit the pattern I know.

Frenzied, mindless, and driven by hunger.

Then they step through the wreckage in a straight line, eyes fixed forward, moving with the cold certainty of predators that know exactly where they’re going, as if they have focus and the ability to control.

A chill slides down my spine because rogues aren’t supposed to do that.

The first lands just inside the threshold, feet hitting the floor in a disciplined, balanced stance that absorbs the impact without wasting a single ounce of motion. His gaze lifts immediately, locking onto me as though he had already mapped out the room before he entered it.

The second doesn’t follow him directly. He angles wide, cutting left in a clean arc that opens the space and stretches the room, forcing repositioning. The third comes in lower, faster, his trajectory already aligned with Cali’s last known position, closing the distance with calculated precision rather than blind aggression.

The fourth never fully enters. He remains at the doorway, just inside the fractured frame, his presence blocking the exit with quiet certainty, as though that position had been decided long before the door ever came down.

For a fraction of a second, every predator in the room focuses on the same target. Movement becomes restricted in ways that shouldn’t happen this quickly, shouldn’t happen without chaos, overlap, or miscalculation.

But there is none.

They don’t hesitate.

They don’t snarl.

They don’t rush.

They advance.

Every step is placed with intention. Every shift of weight is calculated. Every line of attack is already supported by the others before it even exists.

The first one reaches me before the dust has fully settled. He is too fast. Not the reckless speed of something driven by hunger, or the erratic, violent surges I’ve seen in rogues before. This is something else entirely. Something that adjusts mid-motion, that accounts for resistance before it meets it.

I bring my arm up to intercept, the movement clean and practiced, but he’s already shifting as I do, his body turning with mine, not reacting to the block but preempting it, forcing my strike to glance off a line he’s already abandoned.

My momentum carries me a fraction too far, and that’s all he needs.

The second one is already there.

I don’t see the hit coming.