Chapter 5: The Car Ride Home
The only sound in the Impala was the wet, ragged breathing coming from the backseat. Logan had his forehead pressed against the cold window, eyes closed. Every few blocks, a full-body tremor would run through him, a leftover seismic event from the forced shift. His knuckles were split and slowly knitting back together. Next to him, James drove with a stiff, careful grip on the wheel, as if his shoulders were made of cracked glass.
Jackie was curled in the passenger seat, her pink hair a dull matte against the headrest. She wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes were open, fixed on the blur of neon outside—a liquor store, a nail salon, a pawn shop with barred windows. The energy she’d consumed sat inside her like a battery charged with lightning and broken glass. It wasn’t sweet or sensual. It was corrosive. Her skin felt too tight.
Ashanti clutched the briefcase on her lap in the back, her fingers numb around the handle. The money was real. The cost was a vapor in the car, choking them.
They crossed the bridge from Ridge Park back into the city proper, the river below a black ribbon stitched with reflected streetlights.
“We need a new plan.” James’s voice was gravel, scraping the silence. He didn’t look away from the road. “That money buys us a week, maybe two. Darnell doesn’t do payment plans. His penalty isn’t just cash. It’s a pound of flesh from the operation, or from us. We can’t keep selling pieces of ourselves to different rich freaks.”
“What’s left to sell?” Logan murmured, the words slurred with pain.
“Our souls, but I think Armitage got a down-payment on those,” Jackie said, but the joke had no heat. It fell flat and died between them.
Ashanti watched the city slide by. “The money gives us options. We could run. Properly. Not just to the next neighborhood.”
“Run where?” James asked, a genuine question, not a challenge. “The pack in Oregon doesn’t want us. Your coven wrote you off. Jackie’s… well. Our connections are here. Our problem is here.”
“We could pay Darnell the penalty,” Ashanti suggested, though it tasted like ash. “The full hundred grand. Maybe he takes it and calls it even.”
Logan let out a low sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “He’ll take the money. Then he’ll take the operation. Shows weakness. You pay a man not to hit you, he just knows he can hit you whenever he wants.”
The truth of it settled over them. The briefcase was both a lifeline and a target.
Jackie finally shifted, turning her head to look into the backseat. Her eyes were too bright, pupils still slightly enlarged. “I could feel it,” she said quietly. “What you guys hold back. Every day. It’s not just an animal. It’s… a storm. All the time.” She looked at Ashanti. “And you. Your magic isn’t just herbs and whispers. It’s a fucking leash on a canyon. I never knew.”
They had never talked about it like this. Their natures were facts, like bad plumbing or the smell from the downstairs deli. A perpetual, manageable dysfunction.
“Now you know,” James said, his tone not unkind, just exhausted. “So does Armitage. That’s a problem. He’s a collector. He won’t just have one show.”
The apartment building came into view, a hulking shadow against the lesser dark of the city night. James cut the engine a block away, letting the car coast to a silent stop in a patch of deep shadow. Old habit.
They sat for a minute, gathering themselves, trying to reassemble the casual masks they wore like armor. Logan pulled his torn shirt tighter. Ashanti smoothed her dreads. Jackie attempted a smirk, but it looked ghastly.
“Okay,” Ashanti breathed. “We go up. We hide the money. We sleep. We figure it out tomorrow with clear heads.”
They moved from the car to the building’s entrance like ghosts, swift and silent. The stairwell was its own familiar assault of smells. At their door, James paused, his hand not reaching for the key. He tilted his head, listening. Logan moved up beside him, nostrils flaring.
“Someone’s inside,” Logan whispered, the fatigue burning away into immediate, predatory focus.
“Darnell?” Ashanti mouthed.
James shook his head slowly. “Two people. Heartbeats are steady. Not lying in wait. Just… waiting.”
He inserted the key, turned it with exaggerated quiet, and pushed the door open in one fluid motion.
The living room light was on.
Two men sat on their couch, the one with the broken springs. They weren’t Aces. They were older, dressed in off-the-rack suits that were too nice for the neighborhood. They looked like lawyers or mid-level managers. One was bald, with a trimmed goatee. The other had salt-and-pepper hair and wore thin-framed glasses. They held no weapons. A briefcase, newer and sleeker than theirs, sat on the coffee table between the pizza box and the empty whiskey bottle.
The bald man stood. He didn’t smile. “James.Logan. Ashanti. Jackie. My name is Mr. Evans. This is Mr. Cho. We represent Mikhail Vlasic.”
Ice flooded Ashanti’s veins. The severed tether throbbed like a phantom limb.
“You got a warrant?” Jackie said, her voice recovering its defensive sneer fastest. “Or just a real talent for breaking and entering?”
“The lock was persuasive,” Mr. Cho said, his voice soft. He remained seated, hands folded in his lap. “We apologize for the intrusion. Our employer felt a direct conversation was necessary, given recent events.”
Logan took a step forward, his body subtly positioning itself between the men and Ashanti. “What does he want?”
Mr. Evans glanced at the briefcase in Ashanti’s hand. “He felt the severance. A neat piece of work. Impressive. It… inconvenienced a project of his. A sensitive acquisition that required a sustained psychic link. Your signature was particularly useful, Miss Ashanti. Now it’s gone.”
“So I’m fired,” Ashanti said, forcing her voice to be steady. “We’re even.”
“Not quite.” Mr. Cho adjusted his glasses. “The asset he was acquiring slipped its leash. It is now… loose. In the city. It is drawn to the kind of energy you four generate. A beacon, if you will. Mr. Vlasic would like you to find it. And contain it.”
James barked a laugh. “You lost your monster and you want us to fetch it? For what? A pat on the head?”
“For consideration,” Mr. Evans said. “Substantial consideration. And for our employer to overlook the significant breach of contract represented by your unsanctioned severance.”
“We didn’t have a contract,” Ashanti shot back.
“You took his money. You used his resources. You were an asset on his ledger. You don’t get to quit, Miss Ashanti. Assets are repossessed or repurposed.” His gaze was neutral, administrative. “This is repurposing.”
Logan’s growl was a low, sub-audible vibration in the room. The men didn’t flinch.
“What is the asset?” James asked, playing for time, for information.
“A krasue,” Mr. Cho said. “A rather cross-bred one. Southeast Asian origin, but with certain… proprietary modifications from Mr. Vlasic’s labs. It prefers hospital grounds, maternity wards. It feeds on life-force, particularly the nascent kind.”
Ashanti felt sick. A monster that fed on newborns, turbo-charged by a billionaire’s experimentation.
“You let that thing loose,” she whispered.
“An oversight. One you will correct. You have the skills. The witch to bind it. The trackers to find it.” His eyes flicked to Logan and James. “The succubus to perhaps distract it. It is, after all, a creature of appetite.”
“And if we say no?” Jackie asked.
Mr. Evans finally smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Then we inform Darnell of your exact location, the precise contents of your operation, and the large sum of cash you’re currently holding. The Black Aces will be here within the hour. We will also revoke the… supernatural discretion Mr. Vlasic extends over this city. Every two-bit hunter and zealot with a silver bullet or a grimoire will have your names and addresses by dawn.” He spread his hands. “Or, you do this one job. You retrieve our asset. In return, you keep the money you stole from Armitage. Your debt to Mr. Vlasic is cleared. And Darnell is encouraged to find other business ventures. A clean slate.”
The offer hung in the stale air, more poisonous than the stale weed smoke.
They were boxed in. Front door by Darnell’s violence. Back door by Vlasic’s calculated cruelty.
Ashanti looked at her friends. Logan’s jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. James’s eyes were calculating, already weighing the odds of a fight against two unarmed men he knew weren’t as harmless as they looked. Jackie looked hollow, the after-effects of the ritual making her seem fragile.
“We need to talk,” Ashanti said to the men. “Alone.”
“Of course,” Mr. Evans said. He nodded to his colleague. They moved toward the door with unsettling smoothness. “You have until sunrise to decide. The krasue has already hunted once tonight. At Mercy General. The police are calling it an unexplained infant mortality. We’ll be in touch.”
They left, closing the door softly behind them.
For a long moment, no one moved. The buzzing of the faulty light bulb was the loudest sound in the world.
James walked to the window, peered down into the street. “Black sedan. Just pulling away.”
Logan sank onto the arm of the couch, his energy finally spent. “We can’t fight a war on two fronts.”
“We just became pest control for a richer, crueler gangster,” Jackie said, pulling her knees to her chest on the floor. “This is so fucking bleak.”
Ashanti placed the heavy briefcase on the table next to the empty one. The money inside felt dirty now, radioactive. It was the cause of all of this. The need for it. The getting of it.
“He said it hunted at Mercy General,” she said, her mind clicking into a terrible, practical gear. “That’s twelve blocks from here. If it’s drawing on our energy like they said… it’s close. It’s drawn to this neighborhood.”
Logan and James exchanged a look. They both stood a little straighter, the primal instinct pushing past the pain. Something dangerous was near their territory. Their pack.
“We find it first,” James stated, his voice final. “We find it, we contain it. Then we decide what to do with it. It’s the only chip we have left to play.”
Ashanti nodded slowly. The path was clear, and it led down into a deeper dark. “I need to go to the pharmacy. Now. I need supplies I can’t just skim. I need to break in.”
Jackie uncurled herself. “I’ll come. I’m not staying here alone.” She looked at the brothers. “You two…”
“We start hunting,” Logan said, his eyes already glinting with a reflected moonlight that wasn’t in the room. “We get a scent.”
The four of them looked at each other, the weight of the new task settling onto their shoulders. The briefcase of cash sat between them, a monument to a terrible choice. Outside, the city slept, unaware of the monsters in its midst, both the one that flew on stolen life and the four who now had to decide if they would become hunters, or something else entirely.
“Sunrise,” Ashanti said. “Let’s move.”