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The new safehouse was the antithesis of the church library. It was a sterile, anonymous mid-century modern house perched in the Hollywood Hills, all clean lines, floor-to-ceiling windows, and echoing emptiness. Elsa had secured it through one of her countless untraceable shell corporations. It had no history, no scent of dust or devotion. It felt like a waiting room in purgatory.
The heart of this sterile world was a converted walk-in closet, now a makeshift infirmary where no light could penetrate. Morbius lay on a cot, his form barely visible in the absolute darkness. The burns from the dimensional energy had not healed; they had crystallized, covering his arms and chest in a fine, black, glass-like lattice that seemed to absorb the very air around it. His breathing was a shallow, rasping thing.
Elsa monitored his vitals on a tablet, its glow the only light in the room. "His cellular regeneration is still offline. It's not rejecting the damage; it's... ignoring it. The dimensional energy acted like a metaphysical antibiotic, killing his vampirism's ability to function. I don't have the medical knowledge for this."
Jack stood in the doorway, a silhouette against the bright living room. He had healed, his body once again a testament to his curse's power. But the deeper wounds were still raw. The silence of the desert, the memory of the Alpha's sacrifice, the weight of all the lives erased in The Silo—it all sat on him like a leaden cloak.
"He needs a doctor who understands the soul, not just the body," Jack said, his voice rough.
"Those are in short supply," Elsa replied, not looking up from her tablet.
While Morbius fought his silent battle, Elsa had been waging another war in the digital realm. She had set up a command center in the living room, multiple screens displaying the data she'd scavenged from the dying moments of the Chimera facility and The Silo.
"It's not just research data on you, Jack," she said, calling him over. Her finger traced a complex genealogy chart on one screen. "It's a family tree. Their obsession isn't just with lycanthropy. It's with the Russoff bloodline, specifically."
The chart was old, digitized from parchment. It showed Grigory Russoff's lineage, with meticulous notes branching down through the centuries. Red lines marked early deaths, violent ends, and instances of "lycanthropic manifestation." It was a map of a curse.
"And look at this," Elsa continued, pulling up another file. It was a corporate charter. The founding document of the Aegis Consortium. She zoomed in on the founder's name, a name that had been buried under layers of holding companies and legal fiction.
Albrecht Mephistos.
The name was a punch to the gut. Mephistos. A name that echoed in the darkest corners of the supernatural world, a name often used as a pseudonym for the devil himself, or one of his most powerful servants.
"He didn't just randomly choose you, Jack," Elsa said, her voice low. "This is personal. This is a grudge that's centuries old. The Aegis Consortium isn't a company. It's a vendetta."
The war was no longer about science or patents. The corporate shell had cracked, revealing the ancient, hateful core within. Jack Russell wasn't just a subject.
He was the final target in a blood feud that began when his ancestor was bitten, a feud orchestrated by a man whose name was a synonym for hell.
The name Mephistos hung in the sterile air, a venomous secret finally spoken aloud. It wasn't just a name; it was a key, twisting in a lock Jack hadn't known existed. The corporate war, the cold science, the suppressors—it was all a facade. Underneath was something older, darker, and deeply personal.
"He didn't just found a company," Jack said, his voice barely a whisper as he stared at the name on the screen. "He built a tomb. For me."
The revelation shifted everything. The relentless pursuit, the desire not just to capture but to own his very essence—it wasn't about profit or power. It was about completion. The finishing of a dark ritual begun centuries ago.
"The data from the Silo," Elsa said, her fingers flying across a different keyboard, pulling up corrupted files. "There are fragments here... references to a 'Crimson Covenant.' A pact made by a 'Mephistos' with... something. It granted his line power and knowledge, but required a counter-balance, a 'beast of the earth' to be bound to his will. The Russoff werewolf was supposed to be that beast. But the curse was too wild, too independent. It could never be truly controlled."
She looked at Jack, her eyes wide with the implication. "He's not trying to patent you, Jack. He's trying to correct a cosmic oversight. He believes you belong to him."
The sterile safehouse suddenly felt like a cage. The enemy wasn't a board of directors in a skyscraper. He was a phantom from a medieval grimoire, and his claim on Jack was written in blood and black magic.
A low, pained groan from the makeshift infirmary broke the tension. They rushed in. Morbius was stirring, his body trembling. The crystalline lattice on his chest glinted faintly.
"The silence..." he rasped, his voice a dry rustle. "It is... deafening."
He was awake. But the connection to the vampiric curse that gave him life, his strength, his power—it was gone, severed by the dimensional backlash. He was trapped in a dying body, acutely feeling the void where his dark gift had been.
Jack knelt beside the cot. "Morbius. We know who's behind it. The founder. His name is Mephistos."
The name seemed to inject a spark of grim recognition into Morbius's feverish eyes. "A name of lies and contracts," he whispered. "His power is... juridical. He operates on pacts, on ownership. He does not create; he claims."
He tried to sit up, his movements weak and uncoordinated. "You cannot fight a claim with claws alone, Jack. You must break the contract. You must... challenge his right."
The path forward was becoming terrifyingly clear. They couldn't just hunt Mephistos. They had to nullify his ancient, infernal claim on the Russoff bloodline. They needed to prove the werewolf was not a commodity to be owned, but a will to be reckoned with.
But to do that, they needed to understand the original terms. They needed to find the source of the curse itself.
Jack looked from Morbius's broken form to the data screen showing the Mephistos name. The war for Los Angeles was over. The battle for his very soul was just beginning.
The path forward materialized with the grim clarity of a headstone inscription. They needed knowledge that no database could hold, wisdom that predated corporations and science. They needed to speak with the dead.
"The Bloodstone estate," Elsa stated, her decision made. "It's the only place. Our archives contain relics and texts that trace every major supernatural event for a thousand years. If there's a record of this 'Crimson Covenant,' it will be there."
It was a risk. The estate was her family's ancestral home, a fortress filled with as many dangers as secrets, and she had a complicated relationship with its legacy. But for Morbius, for Jack, it was the only option.
Getting there required another ghost-like journey. They moved Morbius, shrouded and stabilized as best they could, into a customized van Elsa kept for transporting "contaminated" artifacts. The drive was long and silent, the weight of their mission smothering conversation.
The Bloodstone estate was not a home; it was a mausoleum built on a foundation of slain monsters. It stood on a remote, storm-battered cliffside in a country that could have been Scotland or some forgotten corner of upstate New York—its location deliberately obscured. It was a Gothic nightmare of jagged spires, stained glass windows depicting violent hunts, and gargoyles that seemed to watch their approach with stone-cold malice.
Elsa used a heavy, rune-inscribed key to open the massive oak doors. The air that rushed out was frigid and smelled of old blood, polished wood, and preservative chemicals.
Inside was a hunter's cathedral. The grand hall was a gallery of the macabre. Taxidermied heads of werewolves, vampires, and other, less identifiable things stared down from the walls with glassy eyes. Weapons of every description—silver-edged glaives, blessed crossbows, stake-firing rifles—were displayed like religious icons.
Jack felt the gaze of a hundred dead monsters upon him. The beast within stirred, not in rage, but in a deep, primal unease. This was a temple to his own kind's extermination.
"Charming," he muttered, his voice echoing in the vast silence.
"Don't touch anything," Elsa said, her tone all business. She led them past the trophy room to a descending spiral staircase that seemed to bore straight down into the bedrock. "The archives are below. The... older the knowledge, the deeper it's buried."
The archives were even more overwhelming than the hall above. It was a labyrinth of shelves carved from the living rock, stretching into darkness. Countless books, scrolls, and stone tablets filled the space, the collective memory of a thousand years of hunting.
Elsa went straight to a specific section, her movements sure. She pulled a massive, iron-bound ledger from a shelf. "The Covenant Ledgers. Every pact, bargain, and deal with a major supernatural entity that the Bloodstones have ever documented."
She began to flip through the brittle pages, her eyes scanning ancient languages and complex sigils. Jack stood guard by the stairs, the oppressive weight of the place making his skin crawl. Morbius lay on a stone bench, his breathing a faint, ragged sound in the profound quiet.
"Here," Elsa finally said, her voice tight. She pointed to a page. The script was in a language of sharp angles and blood-red ink. The sigil at the top of the page was unmistakable—a stylized 'M' that seemed to be made of intertwined serpents.
She began to translate, her voice a low, grim monotone. "In the year of our torment, 1795, I, Albrecht of the House Mephistos, did swear a Covenant with the Shadow..."
She trailed off, her face paling as she read further. She looked up at Jack, her eyes wide with a horror that had nothing to do with monsters.
"Jack," she whispered. "It's not a claim. It's a debt."
She swallowed hard.
"According to this, Grigory Russoff didn't just get bitten. He made a deal. He traded his family's soul for the power to defeat Dracula. The lycanthropy wasn't the curse. It was the collateral."
She looked from the ancient text to Jack, the truth dawning in her eyes.
"Mephistos doesn't just want to own you. He's here to collect."
The word "debt" echoed in the crypt-like silence of the archive, reconfiguring Jack's entire existence. He wasn't cursed by chance or biology. He was inherited collateral. A bill that had come due.
"Read it," Jack commanded, his voice dangerously calm.
Elsa's hands trembled slightly as she translated the archaic text. "...and in exchange for the power to unmake the Son of the Dragon, the line of Russoff shall be bound to the line of Mephistos. Their strength shall be his strength, their rage his weapon, their very souls a testament to his glory... until such time as the debt is called, and the Beast is delivered unto the Master's hand."
She looked up, her face ashen. "Grigory made a deal with a devil to kill a vampire. The power he got was the werewolf curse. But the fine print meant his entire bloodline became the property of Mephistos. You're not Subject Zero, Jack. You're the final payment on a bounced check from 1795."
The cold, sterile ambition of the Aegis Consortium now made a sickening kind of sense. It wasn't just corporate greed. It was Albrecht Mephistos, generations later, using modern science to finally repossess what his ancestor was owed. The suppressors, the resonators—they weren't just tools of control. They were the metaphysical equivalent of repo men.
"A demonic contract," Morbius rasped from his bench, summoning his strength. "Its power is in the agreement itself. To break it... you must break the agreement. Not with force... but with a greater truth."
"A greater truth?" Jack asked, the weight of centuries pressing down on him.
"The contract defines you as a thing. A beast. An asset," Morbius explained, each word a struggle. "You must prove you are more. You must... refute the very definition they have written for you."
It was a battle that could not be won with fangs and claws. He had to fight in a court of cosmic law, with his own identity as the evidence.
Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the archive dropped sharply. The single electric light bulb flickered and died, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the faint glow of Morbius's crystalline wounds. The hair on Jack's arms stood on end. The air grew thick, carrying the scent of ozone and something sweetly corrupt, like rotting roses.
A voice, smooth as oiled silk and resonating with ancient power, spoke from the darkness at the top of the stairs. It was a voice that had no need to shout, because the universe itself seemed to lean in to listen.
"The ledger is correct, of course. The Bloodstones were always such meticulous accountants."
A figure descended the stairs. He was tall, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit the color of dried blood. His hair was silver, his features sharp and ageless. He was Albrecht Mephistos. And he held in his hand a simple, yellowed parchment—the original Crimson Covenant.
He smiled, a expression of profound and terrible ownership.
"But there's no need for all this research, Mr. Russell. I've come to collect what's mine in person."
To Be Continue...