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The truce was a delicate thing, a spider's web of understanding spun across the chasm in Jack's soul. It required constant maintenance. The beast was no longer a panicked prisoner, but a wary and wounded ally, its trust earned moment by moment. The simple act of making coffee was a negotiation—the man's desire for routine against the beast's hyper-vigilance at the hiss of the machine.
Lissa had become the unexpected linchpin. Her presence, a living reminder of the "why," was a grounding cord. She didn't flinch from the occasional flicker of gold in his eyes or the low, thoughtful growl that sometimes rumbled in his chest when he was concentrating. Instead, she asked questions.
"So, it's not like in the movies? You don't just turn into a monster and forget everything?" she asked one afternoon, helping Elsa cross-reference symbols from the damaged Darkhold pages they'd transcribed before the collapse.
Jack shook his head, stirring a pot of stew on a hotplate they'd set up in a corner. The domesticity was surreal. "No. It's... always there. The instincts, the senses. The curse is like a lens. It changes how you see the world, how you hear it, how you smell it. The struggle was always to keep 'me' in charge of the viewfinder." He paused, the ladle still in his hand. "Until it wasn't a struggle anymore. Until the lens just became part of my eyes."
"And that's what the book stole from you," Lissa said, understanding dawning.
"It didn't steal it. It smashed the lens," Morbius corrected from his armchair, not looking up from an ancient text on demonic pacts. "And now he must see through the broken pieces."
While Jack focused on his internal reconstruction, Elsa and Morbius waged a different war—one of information. The cult was destroyed, but the Darkhold was merely buried, not destroyed. And the name "William P. Long" was a thread they couldn't leave unpulled.
"It's not just one cult," Elsa announced, slapping a file folder down on the main desk. She'd been using the Bloodstone estate's digital archives, remotely. "The Children of the Darkhold are a cell-based organization. Long's group was just one branch. They've been dormant for decades, but the energy from your fight with Mephistos... it was a wake-up call. A clarion call to every cell around the world that the 'Prodigal Son' was active and the stars were aligning."
She spread out grainy, scanned photographs from the 1920s through the 70s. Different groups, different countries, but all with the same symbols, the same fervent look in their eyes. "They believe a 'Great Unmaking' is coming, and that a being of pure chaos—a 'Shattered King'—will rise to rule the ashes. They think the Russoff bloodline is the key to opening the door for him."
"The 'Shattered King'," Morbius mused, looking up. "A title for a being that exists in pieces across dimensions. A consciousness of pure entropy. The Darkhold is not merely a book of spells; it is a manual for his reassembly. And the ritual they attempted on Lissa was meant to be a... homing beacon."
A cold dread settled in the room. They hadn't just stopped a kidnapping. They had inadvertently interfered with an apocalyptic prophecy.
It was then that Jack, who had been listening while tending the stew, went perfectly still. His head tilted, his nostrils flaring slightly. The beast, now a partner in his senses, had caught a scent on the air coming through a cracked window.
It was the same cold, dry, ancient must from the cemetery. The scent of the Darkhold.
But it wasn't coming from the ground.
It was moving. Faint, but distinct. A shadow had slipped its grave, and it was walking the streets of Los Angeles.
The scent was a ghost on the wind, a single, corrupted note in the city's vast olfactory symphony. But to Jack's newly-recalibrated senses—a fragile alliance of man's focus and the beast's primal acuity—it was as clear as a shout. It was the Darkhold. Not the book itself, but its essence. Its stain.
"It's here," Jack said, his voice low and tight. The truce inside him held, but it tensed, man and beast becoming a single, focused hunting unit. "The book's energy. It's not buried. It's moving. West."
Elsa was on her feet in an instant, grabbing a tablet and pulling up a map of the city. "Direction? Speed?"
Jack closed his eyes, filtering out the smells of exhaust, food, and millions of people. He tracked that thread of ancient evil. "It's slow. Erratic. Not in a vehicle. On foot. Headed toward... the ocean. Santa Monica."
Morbius was at his side, his own preternatural senses reaching out. "The energy is... loose. Uncontained. It does not feel like a person carrying the tome. It feels like a leak. A wound."
Lissa watched them, her face pale. "What does that mean?"
"It means the cave-in didn't destroy it," Elsa said, her fingers flying across the tablet screen, pulling up traffic and security camera feeds for the route to the coast. "It means something crawled out of that rubble, and it's carrying a piece of that thing with it."
A new, more horrifying picture began to form. The Hierophant and his inner circle were dead, crushed. But what if a lower-level acolyte, perhaps one of the rune-covered ones, had survived? Not with the book, but infected by its power? The Darkhold's corruption could be acting like a psychic parasite, keeping its host alive just enough to serve as a moving beacon.
"Can you track it?" Elsa asked Jack.
He gave a sharp nod. The beast within, no longer panicked but now on a familiar hunt, lent its raw perception to the man's strategic mind. The fracture wasn't a weakness in this moment; it was a division of labor. "I can track it. But we need to move fast. It feels... weak. Fading. If we lose the scent..."
He didn't need to finish. If the host died, the trail would go cold. The loose thread of the Darkhold would be lost in the fabric of the city, free to be picked up by another cell, another fanatic.
"We'll take the van," Elsa said, already heading for the door, grabbing a compact tactical bag. "Morbius, you're with us. Lissa—"
"I'm coming," Lissa said, her voice firm despite the fear in her eyes.
"No," Jack and Elsa said in unison.
"You're not a fighter, Lissa," Jack said, turning to her. The protective impulse was a roar from the beast, echoed by the man's logic. "This isn't a cultist in a robe. This is something... wrong. Something poisoned."
"Exactly!" Lissa shot back. "You said it yourself, you're seeing through broken pieces. What if you need a pair of normal eyes? What if it tries to get inside your head again? I've... I've felt its touch. I might be able to see something you can't."
She stood her ground, and Jack saw not his little sister, but a stubborn, brave woman who had already been dragged into his war. She had a point. The Darkhold's attacks were metaphysical. Her perspective, her very normalcy, could be a weapon.
Elsa looked at Jack, leaving the decision to him. It was his sister. His call.
Jack held Lissa's gaze, seeing the same iron will that had carried their mother through her own tragedies. The beast within recognized her strength, not as a threat, but as pack.
"Stay behind us," he relented. "You see anything, you feel anything, you say it. No heroics."
The hunt was on. Not for a book, but for a leaking shadow, a walking wound of dark magic that was stumbling toward the Pacific, with the fate of the world's sanity potentially trailing in its wake.
The hunt led them into the postcard-perfect chaos of the Santa Monica Pier as the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in garish tourist-trap colors. The scent was stronger here, cutting through the thick aromas of cotton candy, frying oil, and salt water. It was a trail of spiritual decay, and it led straight onto the crowded wooden planks.
"It's here," Jack murmured, his voice barely audible over the carnival music and shrieks from the roller coaster. His eyes, a steadier gold now, scanned the throngs of people. The beast's senses filtered out the noise, seeking the singular, wrong note. "Close."
They moved as a unit through the crowd. Elsa, with her hunter's poise, created a path. Morbius was a shadow at their flank, his presence causing a subtle, unconscious parting of the crowd. Jack led, a predator on a leash, with Lissa tucked protectively between them.
Then, Jack saw it.
Slumped on a bench facing the ocean was a figure in tattered, filthy rags that might have once been purple robes. It was a man, or what was left of one. His head was bowed, his hands clutching his stomach. The reek of the Darkhold poured from him, a miasma of despair. But it was the physical sight that made Lissa gasp.
Patches of his skin had turned a glossy, inhuman black, like the cover of the book itself. The skin was cracked, and from the fissures seeped a faint, shimmering darkness that seemed to drink the light around him. He was quite literally coming apart at the seams, disassembled by the power he carried.
"It's consuming him," Morbius observed, his voice grim. "Using his life force as fuel to keep its signal broadcasting."
As they watched, the man lifted his head. His eyes were gone, replaced by two pools of the same absolute blackness, from which tiny, script-like symbols seemed to swirl and fade. He wasn't seeing the world; he was reading it through the Darkhold's text.
His head swiveled, and those void-like eyes locked not on Jack, but on Lissa.
A rasping, multi-layered voice, like pages turning in a dozen different books, grated from his throat. "The kindling... The spark remains... Unused."
He began to stand, his movements jerky, puppet-like. The cracks in his skin widened, the seeping darkness intensifying.
"Jack," Elsa said, her hand going to the non-lethal pistol on her hip. "Civilians. We need to contain this, now."
But Jack was already moving, not towards the acolyte, but putting himself directly in its line of sight to Lissa. The beast within snarled, not in fear, but in a pure, protective challenge.
The acolyte took a lurching step forward, then another. The people around them began to notice, their laughter dying, replaced by confusion and unease.
"The beacon must be lit," the thing that was once a man intoned, its voice rising. "The Shattered King must hear our call!"
It raised its hands, and the darkness leaking from its body coalesced into two writhing, shadowy tendrils that lashed out—one towards Jack, the other, snaking past him, aimed directly for Lissa's heart.
The fragile peace of the pier shattered into screaming panic.
To Be Continue...