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Peace, Jack Russell was discovering, was not the absence of conflict, but its memory. The church library was whole again, the shelves restocked, the scent of old paper and polish having finally overpowered the lingering ghosts of ozone and blood. The lunar crystal, now inert and dark, sat on his desk not as a weapon, but as a paperweight. A trophy from a war he still, on quiet nights, couldn't believe he'd won.
Los Angeles had, for three months, been blissfully, boringly normal. The city had collectively shrugged off its "mass hysteria" event, burying the memories under a mountain of celebrity gossip and traffic reports. It was the silence after the storm, and Jack was learning to listen to it.
He stood at the lead-framed window, not watching for threats, but simply watching the city breathe. The beast within him was calm, a sleeping giant in the basement of his soul. The control was effortless now, a fundamental part of his being. He was, for the first time in his life, at peace with the monster and the man.
It couldn't last.
The first sign was a whisper on a wind that shouldn't have been able to reach him inside. It was a scent, so faint it was more of a feeling—a cold, dry, ancient must, like the pages of a book sealed in a tomb for a thousand years. It was gone as soon as he noticed it, but the beast stirred in its sleep, a low, curious rumble in his chest.
The second sign was Elsa. She arrived at the library with a banker's box clutched in her arms, her expression grim. She dropped it onto the desk with a thud that made the inert crystal jump.
"Cleaning out the last of the secure storage at the Hills safehouse," she said by way of greeting. "Found this. It was in a hidden compartment in the floor. It's not one of mine."
Jack approached the box. The scent was stronger here. That same ancient dryness. He lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled in packing foam, was a book. It was bound in a leather that was unnaturally black and seemed to drink the light from the room. There was no title on the cover, only a single, stark symbol burned into the center: a stylized, open eye with a vertical pupil, like a goat's or a dragon's. It was the same symbol that had been on the Crimson Covenant.
"It's the Darkhold," Elsa said, her voice hushed. "Or a fragment of it. A copy. I don't know. But it shouldn't be here. I never brought it here."
Jack reached out, his fingers hovering just above the cover. He didn't need to touch it to feel the power radiating from it. It was a cold, hungry power. A whispering power.
"It called to you," a voice said from the shadows.
Morbius emerged from the stacks, his form fully restored, the last of the crystalline scars gone. His eyes were fixed on the book with a mixture of academic fascination and profound dread.
"A tome of such power does not simply get lost," he intoned. "It finds its way to where it is needed. Or to whom it wants."
Jack pulled his hand back. "What does it want with me?"
Before Morbius could answer, the book answered for itself.
The cover flew open, the pages rustling violently without any wind. They stopped on a single, yellowed page. The illustration was a crude but unmistakable woodcut of a werewolf, its head thrown back in a howl. But crawling from its open mouth were not sounds, but words. Words in a language that predated human speech. And scrawled in the margin in a different, frantic ink was a name.
Lissa.
Jack's blood ran cold. His sister. The one person he had managed to keep out of his war, the one part of his life that was still normal.
The book had not come for him.
It had come with a message about her.
The unquiet peace was over.
The name Lissa hung in the air, a hook in Jack's heart. The sight of her name, scrawled in that desperate, frantic hand next to the monstrous illustration, was a violation more intimate than any physical attack. The Aegis Consortium had threatened his body and his soul. This felt like a threat to the last, untouched part of his life.
He slammed the cover of the Darkhold shut, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet library. The ancient leather was cold and unnervingly smooth under his palm.
"How?" Jack's voice was a low, dangerous growl. "How did this get here? Who wrote her name?"
Elsa was already at her computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "The safehouse was compromised. It's the only explanation. Mephistos must have planted it there before his banishment. A final poison pill."
"The timing is... suspect," Morbius countered, gliding closer to the desk but keeping a wary distance from the book. "Mephistos is barred from this city. His influence is severed. This feels like a new player. Or an old one, awakened by the recent... metaphysical disturbances."
He gestured vaguely, encompassing their recent war. "The energy released by breaking the Covenant, by banishing a being of his power... it would have sent ripples through every dark corner of the supernatural world. It may have been a dinner bell."
Jack's mind raced. Lissa lived in New York, pursuing a normal life as a graphic designer. She knew about his condition, of course, but they had an unspoken agreement: he would keep his world of monsters as far from her as possible. She was his tether to the humanity he fought so hard to protect.
He pulled out his phone and dialed her number. It rang once, then went straight to a generic voicemail greeting. Not her personalized one. A cold knot tightened in his stomach.
He called again. Same result.
"Her phone's off. Or dead," he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice.
Elsa looked up from her screen, her face grim. "I'm checking flight manifests, credit card usage, traffic cams near her apartment. Give me a minute."
Jack stared at the closed book. It sat there, inert and menacing. It wasn't just a message; it was a map. And the destination was his sister.
"The book opened to that page for a reason," Jack said, his voice hardening with resolve. "It's not just telling us she's a target. It's telling us why."
Against every instinct screaming at him to leave the cursed thing alone, he reached for the Darkhold again. This time, he opened it himself, carefully turning back to the page with the werewolf and his sister's name.
He focused, not on the fear, but on the connection. The shared blood. The Russoff curse. He let a sliver of his own essence, the unified power of man and beast, brush against the page.
The ink on the parchment shimmered. The frantic scrawl of Lissa's name began to bleed, the letters dissolving and reforming. They didn't change into another word. They changed into a sequence. A string of numbers and letters.
"Geographic coordinates," Morbius murmured, leaning in.
Elsa read them aloud as they stabilized. "34.0522° N, 118.2437° W." She typed them into her computer. The map on her screen zoomed in rapidly, centering on a location less than ten miles away.
"It's the old Hollywood Forever Cemetery," she said, a new kind of dread in her voice. "Not a random spot. The mausoleum of... William P. Long."
The name meant nothing to Jack. He looked at Morbius for explanation.
The vampire's face was a mask of grim understanding. "William P. Long," he said. "A minor stage magician and film producer of the 1920s. Also a known occultist and a fervent disciple of a demon-worshipping sect. His followers were called..."
Morbius's gaze fell upon the Darkhold.
"The Children of the Darkhold."
The pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity. This was no random threat. This was an invitation. A summons to a meeting with a cult that had been waiting in the shadows for a hundred years, and who now believed, thanks to the ripples Jack himself had caused, that the final piece of their ritual had finally arrived.
His sister.
The Hollywood Forever Cemetery under the cloak of a moonless night was a city of the dead nestled against the relentless pulse of the living. Palm trees stood as silent sentinels over ornate mausoleums, their shadows long and grasping. The air, thick with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and damp earth, should have been peaceful. Instead, it was charged with a sacrilegious energy.
They moved through the graves like ghosts. Elsa, her senses augmented by tech, scanned for heat signatures and electronic surveillance. Morbius flowed through the darkness, a part of it. Jack led the way, his every sense tuned to a fever pitch. The coordinates led them to a grand, but neglected, marble mausoleum belonging to the Long family. The iron gate was sealed with a heavy, modern chain and lock.
"It's too quiet," Elsa whispered, her rifle scanning the surrounding area. "No guards. No lookouts. It's either a trap or they're already inside."
Jack placed a hand on the cold marble. He didn't need to sense magic; he could feel the wrongness seeping from the stone itself. It was a cold, greasy feeling, like touching a slug. "They're here."
He didn't bother with the lock. He wrapped his hands around the iron bars of the gate and, with a low grunt of effort, pulled. The metal shrieked in protest, the chain snapping with a sound like a gunshot. The noise echoed unnaturally in the silent cemetery, but no alarm was raised. They were expected.
The interior of the mausoleum was a stark contrast to the weathered exterior. The dust of decades had been swept away. The air was stale and cold, smelling of old bone and ozone. In the center of the single chamber, William P. Long's sarcophagus had been pushed aside, revealing a dark, narrow staircase leading down into the earth.
From the darkness below, a faint, chanting could be heard. It was in the same guttural, pre-human language from the Darkhold.
And underneath the chanting, a sound that made Jack's blood turn to ice.
A heartbeat. Fast, frantic, and terrified.
Lissa.
He didn't wait for a plan. He didn't signal his allies. He plunged down the stairs into the darkness, the beast within him rising to the surface not with a roar, but with a silent, deadly focus. The man and the monster were in perfect agreement.
The staircase opened into a cavernous space that should not have existed beneath the cemetery. It was a natural cavern, its walls covered in the same blasphemous symbols as the Darkhold. Dozens of figures in deep purple robes stood in a circle, their faces hidden by hoods, their chanting rising in a fevered crescendo.
In the center of the circle, on a stone altar carved with infernal runes, Lissa Russell was bound. Her wrists and ankles were secured by manacles that glowed with the same sickly green as the corrupted Ambrosia. Her eyes were wide with terror, her mouth gagged.
Hovering over her, held aloft by an unseen force, was the fragment of the Darkhold, its pages fluttering as if in a storm.
As Jack burst into the chamber, the chanting stopped. The cultists turned as one, their hidden faces focusing on him. The lead cultist, a tall figure with skeletal hands emerging from his robes, stepped forward. He did not seem surprised.
"Jack Russell," the cultist's voice was a dry rasp, like stones grinding together. "The Prodigal Son returns. We have been waiting. Your bloodline is the key that was promised. The girl's latent spark is the kindling. But your presence... your power, fully realized... you are the flame that will light the way for our master."
He gestured to the Darkhold. "The book did not call to you to warn you. It called you here to be consumed. The final component of the ritual."
The cultist raised his arms. The runes on the altar and the cavern walls flared with a violent crimson light.
"The Covenant may be broken, but a new one shall be written tonight! In blood!"
To Be Continue...