CHAPTER TWELVE
The subway tunnels were a throat of pure darkness. I didn't walk, I ran. My boots splashed through stagnant puddles, the sound echoing like gunshots in the silence. Every breath was a fight, the air thick with the smell of rust and my own failure. The wound in my side burnt like a fire, a constant reminder of Miranda's final gift. The hole in my shoulder was a deep, dull throb. The pain was the only thing keeping me sane, a sharp anchor in the ocean of my guilt.
I climbed out into a world gone mad. The air was a solid wall of sound—sirens screaming, distant explosions, the roar of heavy trucks, and shouted orders. And cutting through it all, pockets of absolute, unnatural silence where Lily had passed. You could feel the wrongness of it, a cold spot in the world.
Five miles from the factory, the neighborhood was a skeleton. Houses were blown apart, their guts spilled onto manicured lawns. A swing set was a tangle of melted plastic and metal. I moved through the wreckage, like a ghost in a world I broke.
A corner store stood with its windows blown out. I slipped inside. The place was trashed. Shelves were overturned, glass crunched under my boots. I wasn't a man shopping. I was an animal scavenging. I grabbed a dented can of beans, a warm bottle of water, a dark hoodie from a rack. I pulled it on, the fabric rough against my skin, hiding the bloodstains on my jacket. I was hiding the evidence.
I looked out the broken window. The street was crawling with National Guard. They moved in tight, nervous groups, rifles held tight. Their eyes scanned the rooftops, the alleys. They weren't looking for a little girl. They were looking for a monster. For me.
Then I heard it. A sound that didn't belong. Not the crunch of boots. The soft, almost silent, slip of rubber on wet concrete. Too quiet for a soldier. Too careful for a survivor.
I pressed myself against the cold brick wall, my heart hammering against my ribs. Miranda's knife was a cold weight in my hand.
That's when I saw it.
On the street corner, drawn in stark white chalk, was a symbol. A circle with three sharp lines cutting through it. It looked like a dead tree.
My blood turned to ice.
It was Miranda's mark. The same one she left on the people she killed. The ones she culled to starve the Quiet Man.
She had a partner. A Hunter.
A woman stepped into the open. She was dressed head to toe in black tactical gear. She moved like water, smooth and silent. She held a rifle like it was a part of her. She wasn't scanning for a terrorist. She was reading the street. She stopped at the chalk mark. A gloved finger reached out and touched it. Then her head turned. Her eyes, cold and sharp, scanned the darkness of my alley.
She knew. She knew the ritual. She knew I broke it. And she wasn't here to arrest me. She was here to delete me. I think.
I didn't wait. I slipped back, deeper into the shadows, my breath held tight. The chalk mark was burned into my mind. I was being hunted by the army for a crime, and by a professional for a sin.
I had to get ahead of them. The army was looking in the present. The Hunter was on my tail. I had to look to the past. To where this started.
The Original. Elara's grandfather. The first killer who made the pact.
If the Archon was a sickness, his history was the source. I needed the rules. Now.
I remembered an old police precinct. A place full of old files. A graveyard for dead cases.
I moved through broken alleys, listening to the scared whispers from behind closed doors. They talked about the Butcher. They talked about the little girl with the black eyes. My legend was growing, and it was a monster wearing my daughter's face.
The precinct was a tomb. A big, old building falling apart. I found a basement window and kicked the glass in. The sound was too loud.
Inside, it was a maze. A basement full of boxes. Towers of them. The air was thick with dust. I started digging. My hands were dirty, my fingers stained with blood. I opened box after box. Old reports. Mugshots. Dead ends.
1728, 1735, 1750,...
My fingers brushed against a faded card. I pulled it out.
CASE FILE: TH-1983-009. DALE ELIJAH.
Elara's grandfather. The original.
I opened the box. It was heavy. Inside were old papers. Reports. And then, crime scene photos. Black and white. A body twisted wrong. Another. I felt sick. This was him. This was the source.
Then I found it. Tucked in the back. A small, leather-bound book. A journal. It wasn't his. The name inside was a detective's. Alistair Finch.
I opened it. The handwriting was a frantic scrawl.
October 14th, 1983. "The blood sacrifice binds him to the lineage. The Quiet Man is not mortal. It is a hunger. It requires death, yes, but more importantly, it requires trauma to the core bloodline to secure its vessel. The only way to save the soul of the host is not destruction, but redirection."
Redirection.
The word hit me in the chest. This was it. Not a way to kill the Archon. A way to make it let go of Lily. By giving it a new child to ruin. A new family to destroy.
The journal fell open to another page. A drawing. A big, old church. St. Jude's. With strange symbols drawn around it. A cage for a spirit.
I had the how. Redirection.
I had the where. St. Jude's.
Now I just needed the who. And I knew, in my gut, what that meant. I had to find another family. A good, innocent family. And lead the monster to their door.
I shoved the journal into my jacket and ran. The air was humming, that same wrong vibration. Lily was close.
So was the Hunter. A flicker of movement on a roof. A black shape against the sky. The glint of a long rifle barrel.
The race was on. Against the army. Against a god. And against a woman who knew exactly what I was planning to do.