Page 5 of Vows & Violence
“No,” I agree. “It’s personal.”
He leans against the doorframe, like his body’s too heavy all of a sudden. “Whatever this is, it’s not just following me. It’s inside the cracks. Between things. It shows up when I’m asleep, when I blink, when I breathe.”
I move to him slowly, stopping just short of touching. “Tell me what else you remember.”
He swallows. “I see Vale standing over me, smiling like a priest at a funeral. But it’s not his voice. I see Raven laughing. Her mouth moves, but it’s not her laugh. Like it’s practicing how to wear their faces. Getting better every time.”
“Practicing what?”
He looks at me. “Coming for us.”
Since neither Ghost nor I can sleep, we wander down to the room Viper is set up in. “I found something else,” she says, showing me a map of New Orleans marked in red symbols. Some are carved into stone, others burned into trees. They form a rough circle around the French Quarter.
A containment ring.
“Someone was keeping somethingin,” Viper says. “I think Vale broke it.”
I nod slowly. “Which means it’s out.”
At dawn, Ghost steps onto the porch. I follow him, drawn by the way his body tightens like a wire.
One of our sentries, Brick, a local we paid to watch the back alley, lies dead by the fence. His eyes burned out. No bruises. No blood. Just… absence. I’ve seen bodies torn open, stitched back wrong. But this? It’s like the universe forgot he was here.
Ghost kneels beside him, jaw clenching. “No wounds.”
Viper joins us, gun drawn. “No heat signature either. Like he was erased.”
I crouch low, eyes scanning the street. “Then it knows where we are.”
Ghost looks up. “So what now?”
I meet his gaze. “Now we burn the rules. If it’s not something we can kill…”
“Then we learn how,” he finishes, voice steady. Remembering my words from earlier. I squeeze his hand once. The symbol from the map is carved into the fence beside Brick’s body. A spiral. Deep, fresh, and bleeding.
Chapter Three
Phoenix
The fire crackles in the early morning cold, sending tendrils of smoke curling into the sky. I watch it, hypnotic in its blaze, as if it holds the answers I’m still searching for. Brick’s body burns slowly, his remains reduced to ash and memory. The flames are cleansing him, but they’re doing more than that, they’re cleansing us, too. We couldn’t risk leaving him to rot, not with whatever this thing is still following us.
Viper said normal rules don’t apply to a death like his. That’s why we waited till the next morning, letting the sun rise before we laid him to rest in the fire. She hasn’t explained much, but the way she moves around the pyre, muttering in that low voice of hers, tells me it’s more than superstition. Something old, something deep. I can’t ask, and maybe she wouldn’t answer anyway. But I know one thing for sure, she’s not afraid of the things that live in the dark.
Viper’s standing at the edge of the fire now, her movements careful and deliberate. She dips her fingers into a pouch, pulling out a pinch of salt and oil, and begins tracing symbols around the flames. Her fingers move faster, weaving some invisible net around the fire, but I don’t understand it. I want to ask her whatit means, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. She’s not ready to explain. Some things don’t need explanations. They just need to be done.
I keep my eyes on the fire, keeping my thoughts quiet. Ghost stands beside me, quiet like me, staring at the flames with a composed intensity that matches his usual stoic demeanor. His presence is a solid thing in this strange, haunted moment, and it grounds me, though I can feel his own discomfort, his own tension rolling off him in waves.
“It’s like it’s judging us,” I murmur, not really expecting an answer.
Ghost’s eyes flash to mine, his expression unreadable, then back to the flames. He doesn’t speak, but there’s a moment between us, something unspoken that passes. We both understand. We’re waiting for something, maybe an answer. Maybe just the end.
When the last of the flames dies down, we’re left with only the smell of burning flesh and the chill of the air. Ghost crouches next to the smoldering remains, inspecting the charred earth. Viper steps forward, pausing beside us, watching Brick burn until the last ember disappears.
“We should’ve done this last night,” Viper says finally, breaking the silence. “But the sun’s just as important. It keeps the shadows at bay.”
She doesn’t elaborate further, and I don’t push her. Whatever rules she’s following are different from mine. The dead don’t rest easy in places like this. And it’s like she’s trying to put whatever was inside Brick to rest before it can follow us any further.
We head inside as the sun rises higher, though the heavy weight of the night still clings to us. It feels like we’ve entered another world entirely, where nothing is as it seems.
