Page 11 of Vows & Violence
We duck into a courtyard behind an abandoned jazz bar. Halloween masks hang from the rafters, fluttering in the wind like watching eyes.
I’m shaking, not from pain, but from thewhisperI felt when the bullet hit me. Like it wasn’t lead, it was a message. It said: You opened the door. Now, stay and watch what comes through.
Ghost presses his hoodie to my wound, gentle but furious. Viper's scanning the rooftops, still on edge.
“There’s more coming,” she says quietly. “I can feel it.”
Then we hear it. A low chant coming from around the corner. We peek around the alley wall.
A street performer crouches on the pavement, painting a massive spiral in what looks like blood. His fingers move toofast, toowrong. He chants in a voice that sounds like it’s coming fromunderneathhim.
Ghost stiffens. I already know. The world’s unraveling, and I’ve got a target painted on my soul.
The chanting grows louder as the man looks up. The first one we saw felt wrong. This one? This one wears the face of someone I buried. He’s wearing Reese’s face, the man I killed behind Ghost’s bar.
My brain stutters. My hands go numb. I watched Reese die. Hell, I made sure of it. But now he’s kneeling here, painting spirals like they’re scripture, grinning with lips stitched shut like a goddamn doll.
Chapter Six
Ghost
The wound on Phoenix’s shoulder won’t stop bleeding. I press my hoodie against it, hard enough that she grits her teeth. Phoenix doesn’t make a sound, of course she doesn’t, but I feel the tremor in her legs. She’s still standing like nothing can break her, but her skin’s pale and clammy under the streetlight, and I know the truth.
She’s running on fumes.
I don’t ask if she’s okay. I know the answer I’ll get. Instead, I keep the pressure steady, kneeling in the wreckage of someone’s back courtyard. There’s a broken jazz sign on the wall behind us, some forgotten mural of Louis Armstrong painted over with a spiral. Blood smears across the bricks where we fought our way out.
“You shouldn’t’ve gotten hit,” I say.
Phoenix huffs a quiet laugh. “Tell that to the bullet.”
I look up, but she’s staring past me, past the wall, past the blood. She’s somewhere else.
“Talk to me,” I say. “That thing… it wore Reese’s face.”
Her jaw tightens. “It wasn’t him.”
“No,” I agree. “But it remembered him. Moved like him. Smiled like he did, right before you pulled that knife.”
Phoenix killed Reese. I know she did. His body was still warm when I closed his eyes behind the bar. But tonight, I saw him blink with stitched lips and blood on his hands. That wasn’t a memory. That was something else. That was real.
“C’mon, this way. We need to find somewhere to stitch up Phoenix.” Viper cuts into our thoughts.
Phoenix and I follow her down a couple more alleys until we reach an old shop two blocks off the Quarter. It has boarded windows and a lingering smell of dust and incense. Viper takes watch at the back. Phoenix sits on the floor, peeling off her jacket with shaking fingers, and I get to work on her shoulder.
The bullet went clean through, thankfully. But it left a whisper behind. I don’t say that out loud. I don’t want to feed the idea. Still, her skin’s cold, and I swear the wound looks darker than it should. Like something’s feeding on her blood.
“You ever seen someone come back like that?” I ask, low.
Phoenix shakes her head. “Only once. In Syria. Village hit with something we weren’t briefed on. Kids walked out of graves. Command shut it down, and we never spoke about it again.”
My stomach knots. “And now?” I ask.
She finally looks me in the eyes. “Now I’m speaking about it. With you.”
Mama Dusk’s charm burns in my pocket like a lit match, but I haven’t touched it since she gave it to me. I can feel the shape through the fabric. Small, jagged, warm. Warmer than it should be, like it has its own pulse.
I pulled it out once, earlier, when Phoenix was dozing against the wall. It looked like bone, carved with those spiral lines dug in like someone scratched them with fury. Wax clung to the edges, blackened by fire. I’d asked Mama Dusk what it did.
