Page 15 of Veil of Death and Shadow

The air itself was suffocating, like it was drunk on electricity, hungry for power. For blood.

I focused on the tallest of the three men. He looked like your typical tech bro at first glance—white, lean, and dressed in casual clothes—but it was his white shirt that I couldn’t peel my eyes away from. It was covered in something dark, something that trailed from his chin and—I did a double take, blinking as if my eyes were simply out of focus, conjuring things up from my imagination—fangs.

The man standing next to him was shorter, but his body was stocky and firm, like he’d been sculpted from muscle and nothing else. Where the other stood casually, expression unreadable, this one’s face was contorted in rage, his eyes—a peculiar golden-yellow color—were locked on the man covered in what looked suspiciously like blood.

The third man was the most peculiar of the set. He watched the other two with an unreadable, almost bored expression, but I only spared him a passing glance at first.

I couldn’t pull my focus from the yellow-eyed one for long, every molecule in my body suddenly acutely attuned to him with an awareness that was almost dizzying.

The other two might as well have not even been there.

My gut churned with an impending sense of doom.

Something was wrong.

I could feel the man standing at a precipice, though I couldn’t explain how I knew that or where that precipice would lead once he fell over. But I knew that he would fall, with undeniable certainty.

Without warning, his neck bent back, his strange eyes almost aglow. A loud series of cracks and pops echoed through the otherwise quiet street.

His bones. They were breaking as his body twisted and contorted.

“What the?—”

Sora clasped her hand around my mouth and tugged me back behind the building so that we were out of sight. Her fingers trembled against my cheek.

She didn’t speak, but her eyes were wide, nostrils flaring, the warning etched across her expression clear as day—shut the fuck up or they’ll kill us.

We didn’t move, didn’t breathe for what felt like a full minute.

When I peered around the corner again, there were now two men where there’d once been three.

I blinked, fighting desperately to understand what I was seeing. Where the shortest man had been, there was now a large brown wolf—taller and thicker than any wolf I’d ever seen on TV or in the zoo. A low, deep growl rumbled from the creature, and I swore I could feel the ground shake with the power of it.

My heart raced, its hurried pace beating a frenzied song through my veins. My head rang with the tempo of it, and I was certain they’d be able to hear it from here.

This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be real.

Maybe I was dreaming, still passed out in the park, and this was my brain’s way of shaking me awake.

Sora told me what she’d seen, and I’d believed her, but it was different seeing this for myself.

It was undeniable.

We were less than twenty feet away from what could only be described as a werewolf.

Sora grabbed my hand, tight and steady, our fingers threaded and nails sinking half-moons into each other's flesh. I focused on the sharp pain, let it ground me as we stood there, both of us too frightened to move, or even breathe. We needed to getout of here, immediately, but I didn’t know how to leave without drawing attention to ourselves.

My vision blurred as the man and the wolf brawled, and I focused instead, on the third man watching them.

He was tall, had shoulder-length black hair that was a stark contrast against his pale skin. Now that I let my gaze linger on him, I almost couldn’t understand how I’d noticed the other two men at all. He was striking, his hands and arms tattooed in dark patterns that I couldn’t see well enough to decipher, but that seemed to almost glisten in the sunlight.

His expression was stoic, his jaw tight as he watched the two men from the sidelines.

Briefly, I wondered if they were fighting over him. Maybe some convoluted lovers’ quarrel, but it was only a passing thought. The other two didn’t seem to notice him at all.

And as mesmerizing as he was, I almost understood why—there was something almost ephemeral about him, like I had to actively direct my focus to see him, shaping him anew each time I glanced in his direction.

Still, he stood silently—watching, but not passive. The more I studied him, the sharp curve of his brow, the way his almost-black eyes locked onto the wolf, the more it felt like I was watching a hawk, waiting patiently for its next meal.

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