Chapter Text
Jace Cormack was just a regular guy. From the outside, at least. He worked as a detective for the LVMPD, the kind of cop who’d clawed his way up from the mail room one misdelivered envelope at a time. The uniform never quite sat right on his frame, and paperwork never stopped piling on his desk—yet he made it.
The part no one put in his personnel file was that he was a necromancer.
Not the theatrical kind—no skeletal entourages or screaming shades rising from graveyards. Las Vegas law made sure of that. Full resurrection and death magic were heavy felonies, and the courts weren’t exactly lenient. So Jace stuck to the legal gray: quiet conversations with spirits, small necrotic familiars that dissipated before sunrise, and on rare nights… coaxing a corpse briefly back to speech for one final statement. It never held up in court, memories were fuzzy at best—and once the body slipped back into its eternal quiet, he always guided the spirit along like a final courtesy.
Tonight, like every night, he clocked in as the moon was climbing over the desert skyline. Night shift suited him. The city was quieter, the veil thinner, and the “weird cases” always landed in his lap anyway. His captain didn’t even hide it anymore—anything supernatural, unexplainable, or dripping in occult nonsense went straight to Detective Cormack.
He stepped out of the precinct into cooling desert air, neon flickering off car hoods and grimy pavement, and crossed toward the tiny coffee stand wedged between a laundromat and a bail bonds shop. The scent hit him first—hazelnut syrup, burnt espresso, and cheap caramel.
A barista leaned out of the window before he even reached it, a paper cup already in hand. She was young, bright-eyed, and carried the perpetual irritation of someone who worked for tips yet dealt exclusively with cops.
“Hazelnut, right? Detective walking cliché,” she said, sliding the cup toward him with a smirk.
Jace accepted it with a nod, pale green eyes tired but alert beneath dark lashes. Up close, the scar across his left eye caught the neon light—a jagged slash that looked less like a knife and more like a creature had taken a swipe at him once upon a very unlucky time.
“Appreciate it,” he said, taking a sip.
The barista folded her arms, eyebrow raising. “Appreciate it enough to finally get a car someday? I see you waiting for the bus every night like a teenager grounded by his mom.”
Jace huffed a laugh, stepping aside as another officer approached the window. “When the law lets me get a license, sure,” he shot back. “But seeing random ghosts on the road tends to make one not a safe driver.”
She blinked once, trying to decide if he was joking, then shook her head. “Yeah, yeah, spooky detective business. Tell the DMV that, maybe they’ll put it on the forms.”
He gave a two-fingered salute and backed away, letting the door to the precinct catch his reflection—black hair to his shoulders, uniform jacket open, and the faintest bluish ring under his eyes. The city hummed with life behind him: distant sirens, the neon buzz, and something else only he could sense—the restless murmur of spirits as night fully claimed Las Vegas.
It was shaping up to be a normal shift. Which, for Jace Cormack, meant it would absolutely not stay that way for long.
Meanwhile, across the city...
Kairi Eirwyn killed the engine and sat still for a moment, listening.
The street was quiet in the way cities never truly were—too quiet, like a held breath. Sodium lights hummed overhead, painting the row of apartments in tired amber. Her phone chimed softly in her lap.
ORDER COMPLETE – DROP AT DOOR
She frowned.
The building wasn’t wrong—number matched, unit number painted crooked beside a rusted intercom. She grabbed the insulated bag from the passenger seat and stepped out, boots crunching against loose gravel. The night air brushed her skin, cool and dry, carrying the distant scent of asphalt and something faintly metallic.
Not food.
Kairi walked up the narrow path, eyes scanning automatically. The buzzer panel was old, one button cracked, another missing entirely. She raised her hand to press the call—
—and stopped.
The door was ajar.
Just an inch. Maybe two.
She didn’t move right away.
Predators learned early that open doors were rarely invitations.
Kairi let her senses unfurl just enough. No immediate movement. No raised voices. But the air inside was colder than it should have been, a thin breath of chill sliding out to meet her. Her pulse slowed instead of spiking, focus narrowing the way it always did when things went wrong.
You can leave, a sensible part of her suggested. Mark the order undeliverable. Drive away. Let someone else deal with it.
But the bag was still warm in her hand. And someone had ordered food.
She nudged the door with her knuckle.
It drifted open soundlessly.
Inside, the hallway lights were on, casting long shadows across the stained carpet. One picture frame lay face-down near the wall, glass spiderwebbed. Farther in, she heard the faintest sound—breathing, maybe, or something trying very hard to pretend it was.
Kairi stepped across the threshold.
The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.
Her breath fogged.
“Delivery,” she called out calmly, voice steady, human. “DoorDash.”
Then the sent hit her.
Blood and a lot of it, instantly, she knew: this was going to be a headache, and she should walk away, leave it be.
Oh, how she wished she had it in her to do that...
______
Back at the precinct, Jace barely had time to get through two sips of his coffee before the captain’s office door swung open with the urgency of a tax audit.
“Cormack,” Captain Ruiz barked, chin jutting toward him. “Office. Now.”
Jace sighed through his nose, set the cup on the nearest desk, and followed. Ruiz closed the door behind him, shutting out the bullpen noise and leaving the faint smell of burnt coffee and old printer toner.
Ruiz didn’t sit. He stabbed a finger toward a tablet on his desk. “Silent alarm tripped fifteen minutes ago. Residential complex off Fremont, unit triggered from inside. No response to call-backs. Patrol’s tied up—so it’s yours.”
Jace blinked. “Silent alarm on a Tuesday night? Fancy.”
“Fancy,” Ruiz echoed dryly. “Look—nobody’s reported screaming or black magic circles yet, but given your caseload? You get the first look.”
There it was. The weird cases clause in action.
Ruiz shoved a printed slip toward him with the address scrawled across it. “Building’s old, alarm is newer. Could be a malfunction, could be a break-in. Whatever it is, don’t make me fill out more paperwork tonight.”
Jace raised a hand in mock salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it, boss.”
Ruiz pointed at the cup Jace left on the bullpen desk. “And take your coffee. You’re a menace when you get cranky.”
Five minutes later, Jace was in the back seat of a unit car, because without a valid license, that was still his reality. Officer Bennett drove—young, buzzcut, and entirely uncomfortable around Jace’s particular talent set. Every time they hit a red light, Bennett pretended not to glance at him in the rearview.
Jace ignored it, staring out at the city sliding past—casino lights bleeding into shadowy neighborhoods, the moon hanging low like it had somewhere better to be. He could already feel the subtle tugging in the air, the way restless spirits grew louder as they neared midnight.
“That's the place?” Bennett asked as they turned onto a narrow residential street.
Jace checked the address on the slip, then the building ahead—older stucco exterior, flickering walkway lights, paint peeling around the doorframes.
“That’s the one.”
Bennett pulled up to the curb, engine idling. The apartment complex loomed quiet—too quiet for Las Vegas, even at night. Most buildings had televisions murmuring through walls, dogs barking, someone arguing on a balcony. This one just… sat.
Jace stepped out, coffee in hand, and nodded at Bennett. “Radio if dispatch gets anything else. Otherwise, give me ten.”
“You sure you don’t want backup for— y’know—spooky nonsense?” Bennett asked, only half joking.
“If it’s spooky nonsense, backup just gets in the way,” Jace replied, already walking.
The entrance to the building was a short concrete path lined with dying shrubs. His boots crunched gravel just as another sound reached him—a car door shutting somewhere down the block, someone leaving or arriving. Maybe nothing.
The front walkway smelled faintly of old cigarettes, cheap air freshener, and something metallic he couldn’t quite place yet.
He reached the main door, hand brushing the chipped metal as he pushed it open—
—and paused a single heartbeat too late to notice the lock had already been tripped.
He slipped inside, letting the door ease shut behind him.
And just before the latch clicked, for the first time all night, Jace noticed the scent properly:
Blood.
He didn’t draw his weapon yet. Didn’t call it in. Just exhaled slowly, coffee still warm in his hand, and took a step down the dim hallway toward the unit number blinking on the alarm tablet.
He hadn’t seen Kairi yet.
He hadn’t seen the living room.
He hadn’t seen the blood.
But the night had just gotten complicated, and he was about to walk straight into it.
The hallway stretched ahead of him, dim and narrow, lit by flickering fixtures that buzzed like trapped insects. Jace moved slowly, senses pricking as the smell of blood sharpened with every step. Not pooled—spattered. Recent. His grip tightened around the coffee cup without him realizing it.
Then—
A light snapped on farther down the hall.
Jace froze.
Yellow light bled out from beneath a half-open door, cutting through the gloom. He caught movement—someone inside, moving fast—and then the light flicked off again just as abruptly.
“Dammit—” a voice hissed softly. Female. Close.
Jace took a step forward. “LVMPD,” he called, low but clear. “If you’re in there, don’t move.”
That was when the door opened—
—and someone barreled straight into him.
“Sh—!” The woman cursed as they collided.
Jace staggered back half a step, coffee sloshing dangerously as the insulated delivery bag she’d been carrying slipped from her grasp. It hit the floor hard. The paper tore with a wet sound, and containers burst open, noodles and sauce and rice scattering across the stained carpet like some kind of tragic offering.
Silence fell.
The woman stared down at the mess for a heartbeat, shoulders tight, breath fogging faintly in the cold air. Then she looked up.
Their eyes met.
Up close, she wasn’t what Jace had expected—whatever that expectation had been. Pale, yes, eyes wide in slight panic. Alert. Too alert. Her gaze locked onto his with the sharp, assessing stillness of someone used to danger, weighing it in seconds. Dark hair pulled back, and something… off, just beneath the surface.
“Well,” she said flatly, glancing at the ruined food, “that’s coming out of my rating.”
Jace blinked once, then twice.
He looked at the spilled food. Looked back at her. Took in the insulated bag, Large letters showing DoorDash, the phone clutched in her hand, the absurdity of it all crashing into the tension like a bad punchline.
“…DoorDash?” he asked.
Her mouth twitched despite herself. “Unfortunately.”
He lowered the coffee slowly, badge catching the hallway light as it swung free from his jacket. “Detective Jace Cormack. You wanna tell me why you’re delivering pad thai into a crime scene?”
Her eyes flicked—just briefly—past him, down the hallway toward the apartment she’d come from. When she looked back, something colder had settled into her expression.
“I was just bringing food to this address,” she said quietly. “The door was open already.”
Jace’s jaw set. He reached for his radio with one hand, eyes never leaving her. “Alright,” he said, tone shifting into work mode. “You and I are gonna have a conversation. But first—”
He glanced toward the darkened doorway again, where the cold seemed to thicken.
“—you’re gonna tell me exactly what you saw in there.”
And somewhere between the blood on the floor, the spilled noodles, and the woman who definitely wasn’t just a delivery driver, Jace knew this call had just crossed firmly into his territory.
Jace exhaled through his nose—slow, resigned—like a man who had walked into one too many weird scenes and was already calculating how long tonight’s report would be. Mid-thirties, bone-deep tired, and so used to the supernatural that even the scent of fresh blood barely lifted his pulse anymore.
The woman in front of him, though—she wasn’t rattled enough for a civilian. Not nearly enough. And Jace had been doing this long enough to trust his instincts.
“Yeah,” he muttered softly, “this is definitely one of those nights.”
He holstered his radio, free hand drifting to his belt. The delivery driver’s brows pinched as she noticed the small shift in his posture—her stance tightening just slightly. Fight or flight. Probably both.
“Turn around,” Jace said, voice calm in that I’ve seen this too many times way. “Hands where I can see ’em.”
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “You’re arresting me?”
“No,” he said with mild boredom, “I’m detaining you. Very big difference. One comes with paperwork.”
She didn’t move.
Jace sighed—the long-suffering kind a man gives after a decade of dealing with necromantic nonsense, bureaucratic nonsense, and now apparently DoorDash nonsense.
“You walked out of an active crime scene,” he said. “That makes you a potential witness. Maybe more. And I’m not letting you wander around while I figure out which it is.”
He gently—but firmly—took her wrist. “Don’t worry. If you were gonna try and stab me, you’d have done it already.”
Her jaw flexed, but she didn’t fight him.
He guided her a few steps down the hall to a rusty wall-mounted pipe bracket—solid, bolted deeper than the building’s integrity deserved. He clicked one cuff around her wrist and the other around the bracket.
She tested it—once. It didn’t budge.
“You’ve done this before,” she muttered.
“Sweetheart, I do this more than I do laundry,” he replied, brushing dust off his hands. “Now stay put.”
He crouched, grabbed the ruined meal, and pushed it aside so it wouldn’t trip him on his way back. Then, coffee in one hand, flashlight in the other, he turned toward the apartment’s open door.
Cold breathed out of it in a slow exhale. The metallic tang of blood was stronger now, unmistakable. Jace’s shoulders settled into that familiar, weary readiness he’d honed over years of dealing with the supernatural underbelly of Vegas.
He took one step inside the threshold, letting the beam of his light carve through the darkness ahead.
Before disappearing fully into the unit, he glanced back at her over his shoulder.
“Detective Cormack,” he said dryly. “That’s my name. Usually, polite people give theirs back.”
Kairi watched him for a beat, eyes tracking the way he moved—easy, practiced, already halfway into the job. When he finished speaking, she let out a quiet breath through her nose.
“Kairi,” she said, then added after a moment, “Kairi Eirwyn.”
She leaned her head back against the wall, cool concrete pressing into her hair, gaze drifting to the mess of spilled noodles at her feet. “So much for getting good tips tonight.”
There was no real bite in it. Just acceptance.
This was going to take hours. Statements. Waiting. More waiting. The kind of night where time stretched thin and nothing good came of it. She shifted her weight, testing the cuff again out of habit, then stilled—choosing patience over annoyance.
From the hallway, she listened.
Jace crossed the threshold.
The air changed immediately.
Even from where she stood, she felt it—the way a space hollowed itself out after violence, like sound swallowed by fresh snow. His footsteps slowed. The beam of his flashlight swept once, then again, catching on something low and wrong.
Then he stopped moving altogether.
Inside the apartment, the body lay where it had fallen—or been thrown. There was no mistaking it. The walls were marked with impact, dark smears dragged and splattered across peeling paint. Furniture had been overturned violently, and one chair snapped clean through. Whatever had happened hadn’t been quick, and it hadn’t been merciful.
Jace’s jaw tightened.
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath—not a prayer, just punctuation.
This wasn’t a burglary gone bad. This wasn’t a domestic dispute or a simple murder. The damage told a different story: excessive force, uneven angles, rage without finesse. The kind of killing that came from something stronger than it should’ve been—or someone who hadn’t cared to stop.
He crouched near the body, flashlight steady now, eyes cataloging details automatically. Mid-shift brain clicking into grim efficiency.
Out in the hallway, Kairi closed her eyes briefly.
She hadn’t seen the body.
But she’d smelled it.
And now she knew, with cold certainty settling into her bones, that this delivery had never been about food at all.
Jace crouched lower, but he didn’t reach for the body—not with his hands. Instead, he slid two fingers into his jacket pocket and pinched a small scrap of bone between them. Looked like nothing—white, polished by time, no bigger than a knuckle.
He closed his eyes, exhaled slowly, and whispered under his breath—soft consonants, old language, the kind of syllables that didn’t belong to the living tongue. The room chilled, just slightly, and the lights flickered once as though noticing him.
The bone warmed. Then it pulsed.
To Kairi—still cuffed in the hallway—it might have just looked like him kneeling there, silent. But inside the apartment, something stirred. The kind of stirring only a necromancer would notice.
He breathed in—and the dead answered.
Not with words. Not with memories. But with impressions. Flashes. Sensations.
Cold tile. Hands struggling. A heartbeat too fast and then—
**teeth.**
Not clean, not elegant—feral.
Something feeding, sloppy, tearing instead of biting.
Bruising. Screaming. Silence.
Then hunger again. Endless. Animal. Wrong.
Jace’s eyes snapped open. The bone chip in his fingers blackened at the edges—burnt out from the contact.
“Newly turned,” he murmured. “Sloppy. Hungry. No control.”
He looked at the body again—at the wounds now making perfect sense. Torn, not pierced. Bits of drywall under the nails from climbing. Smears from pacing—**the kind that mark feeding grounds.**
Vampires didn’t leave crime scenes like this unless they were newborn, unsupervised, or abandoned. And newborns never left until they’d fed enough… or until something stopped them.
Which meant—
He wasn’t gone.
Just waiting.
The air behind Jace shifted—just slightly, like breath without lungs. He didn’t turn; he didn’t need to. The dead in the room whispered it to him through instinct alone.
Jace stood sharply. His voice came out low, controlled, but edged with urgency:
“We’re leaving.”
He didn’t shout. Didn’t panic. He moved.
Boots scraping against cheap linoleum as he crossed the threshold back into the hall—fast, precise. Kairi barely had time to straighten before his hand closed around the chain of the cuffs.
“Hold still,” he said—no room for argument, no explanation.
Necrotic energy crawled through his palm, a cold green shimmer that flickered like rotten candlelight. The metal sizzled, then rusted—centuries in seconds—before collapsing into choking orange dust.
Kairi jerked free just as the rust hit the floor in a soft hiss. Jace grabbed her wrist—firm, not cruel—and pulled her down the hall with him.
“What—” she started.
“No time,” he cut in, tone still even, but the urgency now unmistakable. “Vampire nest. Newly turned. He’s not done feeding.”
The word *feeding* landed like a dropped knife.
They cleared the building entrance in seconds. Jace spun her behind him, free hand already pulling a narrow sheathe from inside his jacket. Out slid a blade carved from bone—smooth, pale, wickedly sharp.
He dropped to one knee on the concrete and bit the pad of his thumb—hard—until blood welled. He smeared it across the flat of the dagger and drew a quick sigil against the ground—curved lines and a binding knot.
“Bone and blood,” he whispered, voice threading through ritual, “bar the path of lifeless breath.”
The lines ignited—not with fire, but with sickly green light. They spread into a circle that expanded outward, forming an invisible wall across the threshold. The air hummed, pressure tightening until it snapped shut with a sound like a held breath finally released.
Kairi stared at the now-quiet doorway, eyes on the glowing sigil that slowly sank into the concrete like ink bleeding into paper.
Jace stood, tucking the bloodied dagger away. His expression was grim, but steady.
“That’ll hold dead or undead,” he said, already scanning the street. “For now.”
The night settled around them—sirens distant, wind low—and behind the barrier, somewhere in that apartment, something **moved**.
Slow.
Hungry.
Waiting.
Jace didn’t look panicked. He rarely did.
But the set of his jaw said plenty.
Kairi hadn’t needed Jace’s explanation.
She’d heard every word he’d murmured in the apartment—the shift in his breathing, the scrape of bone against skin, the way the air thickened when something answered him back. Darkness didn’t bother her; it never had. She’d watched the room through sound and scent alone, mapping it in her head while she waited against the wall, cuff chain humming faintly with tension.
When the sigil sank into the concrete, the building reacted.
Not loudly. Not all at once. But the structure tightened around it, like an animal bracing after a snare snaps shut.
Kairi tilted her head.
Something upstairs moved wrong.
Too fast. Too erratic. Weight slamming from wall to wall, pacing in sharp, frustrated bursts. She lifted her gaze slowly, tracking the sound upward through floors and beams until her eyes locked onto a second-story window above the sigil’s edge.
She squinted slightly.
“…So,” she said, tone conversational despite the circumstances, “how well does that work for things in windows?”
Jace barely had time to follow her line of sight—
—before a chair exploded outward through the glass.
It sailed end over end, shards glittering as it hit the pavement with a violent crash. A heartbeat later, a shriek tore through the night—raw, furious, animal in a way no human throat should manage.
The vampire slammed into the window frame, half out, half stuck, clawed hands scraping uselessly against the invisible barrier. His face was a mess of fresh blood and broken restraint, eyes glowing too bright, fangs bared in a snarl that was more hunger than threat.
He hit the edge of the sigil and rebounded, snarling as if burned, slamming back inside with a sound like meat hitting tile.
Again.
Again.
“Fuck—!” the vampire screamed, voice cracking with frustration as he clawed at the barrier from the wrong side, unable to cross it, unable to climb free.
Kairi watched calmly, arms folding loosely across her chest.
“…Huh,” she said. “Guess that’s a yes.”
Jace stared for half a second—at the vampire, at the window, then at her.
Slowly, he exhaled. “Okay,” he said flatly. “New rule. You don’t get to ask questions like that unless you explain how you knew to ask them.”
Behind them, the vampire shrieked again and slammed into the unseen wall, snarling and pacing like a caged animal.
Kairi finally looked back at Jace, expression unreadable but eyes sharp with interest.
She pantomimes locking her mouth with a key. Then puts her hands in the pockets of her shorts.
Jace stared at her for a beat, one brow lifting at the pantomimed lock-and-key, then blew a slow breath through his nose—equal parts tired and resigned.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Be mysterious. Tonight’s already a shitshow.”
Another crash shuddered through the building as the newborn upstairs howled and launched itself at the window again—only to ricochet off the threshold like it had sprinted face-first into plate glass.
Jace turned his head slightly, projecting just enough for the vampire to hear him:
“For the record, the barrier works great on doors, windows, and thresholds.”
Another slam—another frustrated, feral scream.
“…Not great on chairs,” he added dryly, eyeing the wrecked remains of splintered wood scattered on the pavement. “Or other things without souls. So—keep an eye out for airborne furniture.”
He slipped a hand into his jacket and pulled out his phone—not the police radio clipped to his belt. Radios were for cops. Phones were for supernatural politics. He scrolled to a contact labeled ‘MELISSA (DON’T CALL)’, hovered a second, then tapped the one beneath it—‘Harvey – Melissa’s Handler’.
The line clicked on the second ring.
A groggy voice answered, “…Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Yeah,” Jace said, leaning against the squad car hood with the ease of someone who’d done this dance before. “And I’m betting you’ll be awake in about thirty seconds anyway. Put this on the urgent board for the Countess.”
A sigh. “Stop calling her that.”
“Tell Melissa someone made themselves a newborn up here. No maker supervision, no leash, no cleanup. Feeding site. Civilian witnesses.” He glanced sideways at Kairi. “Plural.”
He heard rustling—Harvey sitting up fast.
“Is it contained?”
“I’ve got it boxed in. For now.”
“…Did you use blood on pavement again?”
“Harvey,” Jace said, tone flattening. “Focus.”
Another beat of silence, then: “Melissa will send a team. Don’t engage the neonate. Don’t kill it. We’ll handle the Masquer—”
“It’s 2026,” Jace cut in. “There is no Masquerade.”
Harvey made a strangled noise. “You know what I mean. Don’t let humans record it.”
“Already on it. Call me when they’re en route.”
He hung up before Harvey could lecture him about supernatural diplomacy.
The vampire upstairs shrieked again—high, animal, dragging its nails across the unseen barrier as though it could tear a crack open by sheer desperation. That kind of hunger didn’t come from starvation; it came from shock. New blood. A turned body still thinking it needed to breathe.
Jace pocketed his phone and jerked his chin toward the squad car’s front seats. Bennett was inside, staring wide-eyed through the windshield like a man watching a nature documentary he did not sign up for.
Jace rapped on the glass. Bennett rolled it down a cautious three inches. “Uh—Detective?”
“You’re released,” Jace said. “I’ve got this.”
Bennett blinked. “You… need a lift?”
Jace shook his head. “Bus’ll do. Vampires make great conversation starters at the stop.”
The officer swallowed. “Should I— uh— call this in as a—”
“Tell the Captain it’s another long and paperwork-filled night,” Jace said, stepping back as Bennett nodded shakily. “And that it’s supernatural, so he owes me a coffee.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Bennett?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t go near the building,” Jace added. “Unless you’re furniture-proof.”
Bennett stared at the broken chair in the street, then pulled away fast enough to chirp the tires.
Silence settled again—except for the thrashing and snarling upstairs. Jace turned back to Kairi, brushing dust off his jacket.
“All right,” he said, tone shifting into something marginally more conversational despite the circumstances. “Melissa’s people will be here soon. I need you to stay until they arrive—one, so we can verify we didn’t harm that thing upstairs, and two, so they know we have no idea who did this.”
He paused, studying her for a beat—like someone expecting pushback, excuses, or a sprint for the exit.
“Long night ahead,” Jace finished.
The vampire slammed into the window again, howling.
Kairi didn’t argue.
She just nodded once—small, tired—and let out a quiet sigh that fogged faintly in the cold air.
She watched Bennett’s taillights disappear down the street, red smears swallowed by distance, then turned back to her own car. The driver’s door creaked as she opened it, slid inside, and turned the key. The engine purred to life, and a soft chime followed as her phone auto-connected to the speakers.
Jace caught the movement out of the corner of his eye but didn’t comment. Not yet.
Kairi didn’t look at him as she stepped back out, closed the door, and hopped up to sit on the trunk instead, posture loose but alert. The newborn upstairs was still losing its mind, shrieking and battering the barrier like it might break itself before it broke free.
She unlocked her phone.
Scrolled.
Paused.
Thumb hovering, like she was choosing carefully.
Then she hit play.
At first, it was just a low note—warm, slow, almost a hum—rolling out of the speakers. Something old and melodic, all strings and breath, the kind of song that felt like it had been written for quiet rooms and long nights. No lyrics at first. Just rhythm. A pulse.
The effect was immediate.
The next slam upstairs came weaker.
The shriek that followed cracked halfway through, collapsing into something more confused than feral. The pacing slowed—heavy steps turning uneven, then stopping altogether. A few seconds later, there was a sound like someone sliding down a wall, claws scraping lightly before going still.
Silence.
Not complete—there was still breathing, ragged but no longer frantic—but the violent chaos was gone.
Jace froze.
He turned his head slowly toward the building, then back to Kairi, then up again like he expected the vampire to start screaming out of spite.
It didn’t.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
Upstairs, the newborn let out a low, broken sound—something between a whine and a sigh—and didn’t move again.
Jace stared at her, incredulous. “You put it to sleep.”
Kairi shrugged faintly, eyes on her phone screen as the song continued, soft and steady. “Not sleep,” she said. “Just… grounded. Everything about them is too loud right now. Hunger, fear, noise. This helps.” A beat. “Sometimes.”
She finally glanced at him. “Sound carries. So does intent.”
Jace opened his mouth, closed it, then dragged a hand down his face. “Of course it does.”
He looked back up at the quiet window, then at the wrecked chair in the street, then at her again—like he was mentally rearranging a very long list of assumptions.
“…I’m not even going to ask how you knew that would work,” he said. “I don’t have the energy.”
Kairi’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, but she didn’t comment. She just stayed where she was, leaning back, closing her eyes, music low, steady, doing its work while the night held its breath again.
The night didn’t stay quiet for long.
Headlights washed faintly over the buildings first—reflections before the sound—followed by the low, deliberate growl of engines approaching without urgency but with intent. Not patrol cars. Unmarked. Too coordinated.
Jace straightened slightly, eyes tracking the vehicles as they rolled to controlled stops at the far end of the street.
Three SUVs. Matte black. No insignia.
Doors opened in near unison.
People stepped out who moved like they already knew exactly what they were walking into—no hesitation, no surprise at the shattered chair or the cracked window above. One woman took point, tall, dark coat, hair pulled back tight, eyes sharp as she swept the building and then landed on Jace.
Amanda.
She raised two fingers in acknowledgment, already speaking into her earpiece. “Perimeter’s stable. Barrier’s holding. Neonate’s contained.”
Her gaze flicked to Kairi—lingered a half second longer than polite—then back to Jace. “You didn’t kill it,” she noted.
“Didn’t even have to threaten it,” Jace said dryly, jerking his chin toward the soft music still spilling from Kairi’s speakers.
Upstairs, the newborn vampire shifted once—quiet, subdued—then went still again, as if aware something bigger had arrived.
Amanda’s team fanned out with practiced efficiency, tools and cases coming out, voices low and controlled. The night resumed breathing, cautious but calmer now.
Kairi stayed where she was, music playing, watching it all with that same unreadable calm.
Jace didn’t move at first—just stood there with that familiar posture of a man who had seen too many supernatural incidents and never once been properly compensated for them. Thirty-something, tired, unimpressed. The weird didn’t thrill him anymore; it mostly just cut into his sleep schedule.
Amanda’s arrival, however, brought with it a shift in the air—not magical, but political. The kind that made precinct captains groan and detectives reconsider career paths.
The first vampire out of the second SUV made direct eye contact with Jace and immediately curled his lip. The others weren’t as overt, but the disdain was unmistakable—brief flicks of their eyes, nostrils flaring, shoulders angling just slightly away. Vampires didn’t like necromancers. Old instinct, older territory disputes.
Jace felt it settle over him like a bad smell, and for a moment, his expression didn’t shift at all.
Then one of them—pale, expensive suit, eyes too red for this early in the night—clicked his tongue.
“Corpse-caller,” he muttered in a voice just loud enough to be heard. “How charming.”
Jace didn’t even bother looking up at him. “Wow,” he said flatly. “If you get any edgier, someone’s gonna trip and fall on your personality.”
A few of Amanda’s people stifled grins. The vampires didn’t.
Another stepped forward—taller, older, the kind who didn’t bother wearing their humanity well. “Remove the ward,” he ordered. Not asked. Ordered. “It impedes us.”
Jace finally turned his head, bored green eyes locking onto the speaker. “It’s called a containment barrier,” he corrected. “And right now it’s what’s keeping your newborn from redecorating the neighborhood with civilian blood.”
The vampire scoffed, unimpressed. “Your crude hedge magic is unnecessary—”
That was the wrong button.
Jace’s jaw flexed once, and in the same breath his hand snapped up—not fast, not dramatic, just lazy—fingers curling through the air as if plucking a thread. The temperature dropped in a five-foot radius, and the asphalt under the vampire’s feet darkened, shadow pooling up like liquid ink, gripping at his ankles.
The vampire froze mid-step, eyes widening just enough to show surprise. Or fear.
Jace didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“You walked into my scene,” he said quietly, tone scraping with practiced exhaustion rather than anger. “So you don’t get to tell me what’s necessary.”
The vampire tried to move—and found his boots locked to the spot by a darkness that whispered with dead voices only he could hear. His lips parted, fangs pressing the edge of his control.
Amanda lifted a hand—not in threat, but in command. “Cormack,” she said. “Let him go. For now.”
Jace held her gaze a heartbeat, weighing how much trouble he cared to invite tonight. Then, with a casual flick of his fingers, the shadows dissolved like smoke. The vampire stumbled back half a step, boots scraping asphalt, eyes burning with humiliated fury.
Nobody spoke for a long second.
Amanda inhaled slowly. “The barrier,” she repeated—this time a request, not a command.
Jace rolled his shoulders, muttered something about paperwork, and turned toward the apartment. With a short gesture—two fingers drawn through the air—he unraveled the necromantic seal. The barrier cracked like dry ice separating from glass, the cold pressure lifting instantly. The newborn vampire’s breathing changed upstairs—wild, starved instinct brushing the edge of the building—but Amanda’s people moved in immediately, tranquilizers ready.
Satisfied—at least professionally—Jace stepped away from the entry, tugging a battered cigarette from his jacket. His lighter wasn’t a lighter at all—just a snap of his fingers and a sudden bloom of eerie green fire dancing at his thumb. Soul-flame. Cold and bright as northern lights.
He lit the cigarette with it, inhaled, and let the flame wink out.
Amanda watched him through her peripheral vision while issuing orders. The other vampires watched him like someone might watch a snake—aware it’s dangerous but offended at its existence.
Jace exhaled smoke, deadpan.
“So,” he drawled, “that’s me being helpful. Now—are we all done calling me names, or should I grab a notebook and start tallying insults?”
Kairi stayed where she was while Jace handled it.
She didn’t interrupt when the vampires postured, didn’t react when the slur was tossed his way. She watched instead—quiet, still, eyes tracking the way dominance rippled through the group like a bad habit. When Jace snapped the shadows up around the offender’s boots, her brows lifted a fraction. Not surprise. Appraisal.
When Amanda told him to stand down and the shadows released, Kairi exhaled slowly through her nose.
Only then did she laugh.
It was a soft sound, almost a giggle—but it carried no humor at all.
“This day and age,” Kairi said lightly, voice carrying just enough to cut through the tension, “gods walk the earth and party downtown, and vampires old enough to have known my great-great-granny’s parents still can’t manage to play nice.” A beat. “Or stop being racist.”
She hadn’t raised her voice. She hadn’t stepped forward.
She just tapped her phone.
The music cut out.
The effect was immediate—and brutal.
The newborn upstairs went feral in under a second.
A shriek tore through the building as the vampire slammed into walls and windows, rage and hunger spiraling unchecked. Furniture cracked. Glass rattled. Amanda’s people surged instinctively, weapons snapping up as the situation tipped from controlled to chaos.
Jace felt it then—the sudden absence of pressure, like realizing too late that a constant hum had been holding something together. He hadn’t noticed the magic while it was there.
He noticed the hell out of it when it vanished.
Kairi waited exactly long enough for the point to land.
Then she hit play again.
The music returned—low, steady, grounding—and the newborn’s frenzy collapsed almost instantly. The screaming broke into ragged breaths. Claws scraped weakly, then stilled. Silence followed, thick and obedient.
In that quiet, Amanda’s gaze snapped to Kairi.
Just for a heartbeat.
Recognition flickered there—sharp, assessing—before Amanda masked it and resumed issuing orders. Her team moved faster now. Smarter.
Kairi slipped the phone into her jacket pocket and straightened, finally meeting Amanda’s eyes. Her tone was calm, but there was no softness in it.
“I’m already screwed out of my tips tonight,” she said. “So can we all just play nice and act like the grownups we pretend to be?”
Sarcasm clung to the words like frost.
No one laughed.
The newborn stayed quiet. The vampires kept their mouths shut. And Kairi leaned back against her car again, music humming faintly into the night—very clearly holding the leash without ever needing to pull it.
Amanda let the silence breathe for another second before clapping her hands once—sharp, surgical, and enough to jar her people into motion.
“Containment team inside,” she ordered. “Sedate and secure.”
Two vamps and a medic bolted up the stairwell. The others fell into practiced patterns—room sweeps, perimeter checks, comms chatter going tense and clipped.
Kairi watched it all with that same detached calm, like she’d expected the chaos and found the response merely acceptable.
Jace stayed close but not hovering, eyes flicking between her, the door, and Amanda. He could feel the newborn’s psychic frenzy like static under his skin—distant now, controlled, but still feral at the edges. The music held the line better than any sedation he’d ever seen.
A minute later, the containment team re-emerged—one carrying a reinforced travel cradle that looked like a cross between an ICU bassinet and a blastshield. Inside, a tiny figure lay half-curled, half-feral—fanged, trembling, eyes too big for its skull. Tubes fed sedative and nutrient solution into an IV port. Silver-thread restraints kept flailing limbs harmless.
The medic adjusted a monitor, then nodded. “Stabilized. We’ll get them to St. Aurelia’s neonatal unit. Full sun override suite is prepped.”
Amanda’s jaw tightened just enough to betray the tension. “Move.”
The team vanished into the transport van with military precision. Doors shut. Engine ignited. The newborn was gone.
Only then did Amanda return to Jace—expression clean, professional, and cold.
“There will be an investigation,” she said, voice low enough not to broadcast, but not soft. “Expect a follow-up. And expect that I will need your official statement, not whatever bullshit the tabloids will try to spin.”
Jace opened his mouth, but she wasn’t done.
“And I expect you to handle her.” A small head-tilt toward Kairi, who lifted an eyebrow like she’d heard it all anyway. “If she’s walking around suppressing newborn frenzies with a Spotify playlist, I need to know why. And how.”
Kairi smiled, sharp and amused. “Premium subscription. Worth every penny.”
Amanda ignored the joke and turned away, signaling her people to finish the site closure.
Jace pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling through clenched teeth. “Yeah, sure. Handle her. No pressure.”
He finally looked over at Kairi. “So. Before a Vatican black ops team kicks in your apartment door—contact info.”
She blinked once, then fished a phone out of her pocket without argument. “Business or personal?”
“Both,” he said. “Don’t make me guess.”
Numbers were exchanged. Phones pinged. Kairi slid hers away again as if she’d just handed over the secret launch codes and was bored about it.
Jace glanced back toward the café table he’d abandoned fifteen minutes ago—where his latte now sat sad, abandoned, and fully cold.
He stared at it like it had personally failed him.
“Goddammit,” he muttered. “My coffee’s cold.”
Kairi snorted. “Tragic.”
“Hey,” he shot back, “some of us don’t get to fix our problems with mood music and eldritch vibes. Some of us require caffeine.”
She pushed off her car, stretching lazily. “Buy another one.”
“It was six bucks.”
“Then get two. Inflation’s a bitch.”
Jace looked toward the retreating convoy, the sealed apartment, the mess that would turn into paperwork, formal interviews, and probably someone’s disciplinary hearing.
He sighed.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
The music from Kairi’s phone hummed low and steady—an undercurrent that kept the night from fraying at the seams. And for the first time since the newborn screamed, no one looked ready to kill anyone.
Which, Jace guessed, counted as a win.
Jace’s gaze tracked the last of Amanda’s convoy until tail lights bled out into the night. The apartment parking lot fell into that strange post-crisis silence—too empty, too aware of itself.
He drew a long drag off his cigarette, letting the smoke coil in his lungs like a held breath of another world. Kairi watched from her casual lean against the car, hands in pockets, music still pulsing low like some unseen heartbeat.
Then Jace stepped away from her—back toward the cracked concrete where the newborn’s frenzy had first bled through the walls.
The same spot where his blood had hit the pavement. Where something old had stirred.
Without ceremony, he flicked the cigarette toward it.
The ember hit the dried blood.
Reality stuttered.
A line of viridian light ignited outward—thin at first, then blooming into green soul fire that rushed across the ground in fractal veins. It surged up the exterior walls, tracing invisible sigils that revealed themselves only for a heartbeat before dissolving into flame.
Kairi straightened off the car, brows lifting as the fire climbed higher—no heat, no smoke, just light and a low, resonant hum like monks buried in the earth were chanting through stone.
Then the souls came.
They peeled off the charred brick and shattered windows like pale afterimages—shapes of men and women, some clear, some vague, each tethered to invisible wounds. A few looked around, confused. More simply stared at the sky.
One flickered near Jace—young, eyes hollow with a violence that hadn’t been hers. She lifted a hand as if to touch him… then broke apart in a swirl of green sparks that rode the flame upward and vanished.
Another screamed—silently—as its form dissolved, trauma cracking like thin ice until it shattered into motes of emerald light.
Dozens followed—some fast, some slow, each unraveling into soul fire that spiraled skyward before blinking out like dying stars.
It was over in seconds and yet felt like hours.
Then the last thread of green curled up the club façade, hovered in the air like a question mark, and winked out.
Silence rushed back in—real silence this time. Mortal.
Kairi let out a low exhale. “Well,” she said softly, tone somewhere between reverence and awe, “that’s one way to do pest control.”
Jace watched the final motes fade, jaw locked, emotion buried somewhere under duty and cigarettes.
“Ritual was anchored to the newborn,” he said finally, voice rough. “Blood binds the doorways. When they open, they don’t always close.”
He toed the spot where the soul fire had sparked. Cold now. Ordinary.
“Had to clean the leftovers.”
Kairi tilted her head. “Liberation ritual.”
“Something like that,” he said.
She studied him for a beat—really studied him—eyes flicking over the shadows still coiled faintly at his heels, the way the air around him hadn’t fully settled.
Then she nodded once.
“Good,” she murmured. “Not everyone bothers.”
Jace lit a new cigarette off the corpse of the old one. “Not everyone should be allowed to play with this shit in the first place.”
He blew smoke toward the empty sky, where the green sparks had vanished.
“Most of them don’t know what happens after.”
Kairi leaned back again, expression unreadable. “You do?”
Jace took another drag.
“No,” he said. “But I know what not to leave behind.”
For a moment, the night didn’t feel like a crime scene or a battlefield. Just a place where the dead passed through and the living pretended they understood why.
Then Kairi’s phone buzzed with an incoming alert—bass lines cut off mid-beat.
Kairi glanced at the notification, thumb hovering before she dismissed it with a flick. “Client,” she muttered. “Or one of the gods having a temper tantrum. Hard to tell these days.”
Jace snorted, low and tired, smoke curling off his lip. The soul fire was gone, the vampires gone, the newborn sedated and boxed like a biohazard—and for a moment, he just stood there, shoulders loose, the night finally allowed to be ordinary again.
“So,” he said, jerking his chin toward her insulated bag, “inquiring minds need to know.”
Kairi blinked. “Know what?”
He gestured vaguely at the mess of cold noodles, vampire politics, and supernatural fallout scattered through the night.
“…you do Uber too,” he asked, “or just Door Dash?”
Kairi’s composure finally cracked.
She let out a soft giggle—real this time, warm and unguarded—as she slid off the trunk of her car. The motion pulled her out of the streetlight just enough to reveal the back window, and Jace caught it in a double take:
Door Dash.
Uber.
Uber Eats.
Lyft.
All layered like merit badges of economic survival.
“Wow,” he muttered. “You collect those or…?”
“Benefits of flexible employment,” she said lightly, strolling past him toward the abandoned café table. “And a very high tolerance for nonsense.”
She picked up his cup.
Jace opened his mouth—probably to warn her it was cold, probably to complain about wasted money—then stopped when she handed it back.
The lid was warm.
Not lukewarm.
Not “maybe it sat under a heat lamp.”
Hot.
Steam curled faintly from the spout.
He stared at it. Then at her. Then back at the cup, like it had personally betrayed the laws of thermodynamics.
“…No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
Kairi just smirked. “You looked like you needed a win.”
He took a cautious sip.
Hot. Fresh. Perfectly drinkable.
Jace exhaled a stunned laugh through his nose. “I am choosing not to ask.”
“Smart,” she said, already moving back toward her car. “You’re in luck, though. I do a bit of whatever I can on my days off.”
She opened the driver’s door and gestured inside with a casual tilt of her head. “Hop in. I’m technically still on shift.”
Jace glanced once at the now-quiet building. At the empty street. On the night that I had finally decided to behave.
Then he lifted the coffee in a small salute. “Six-dollar miracle coffee and a ride?”
Kairi’s smile widened just a fraction. “Inflation-adjusted perks.”
He got in.