Page 25 of Vows & Violence
The motel comes into view like a rotted tooth on the side of the highway. Faded sign. Weeds grown tall, half the windows are boarded up, and the other half are shattered. The only thing breathing here is the rust.
MV’s coordinates brought us here. Somewhere inside it is a kid who shouldn’t be off-grid.
We kill our engines. The silence that follows rings louder than the ride.
Poison swings off her bike and points toward the left wing of the building. “Phoenix, Wendigo, flank that side. Scissors and Viper, breach the front. Gypsy runs overwatch.”
No hesitation. No debate. We move like muscle memory.
As I draw my Glock, I feel it again, like pressure behind my ribs. That spiral hum. Not loud, not obvious. Just a whisper of something waking up. I shove it down.
Wendigo eyes me sideways. She’s not subtle. “You feel it too?”
I nod once. “Yeah.”
We slip past broken glass and creaking wood, and I’m not sure what hits me first. The smell or the stillness.
Inside, the air is thick with mildew and rot. Dust motes cling to the morning light bleeding through a boarded window. There’s no sign of a struggle, no blood, but the feeling crawling up my spine doesn’t come from logic.
This place isn’t empty. It’s waiting.
Wendigo clears a room. I check the next.
Then I see it. A child’s shoe. Small. Scuffed. Lying in the middle of the floor, perfectly placed. Next to it, carved into the wall, is a familiar symbol. The spiral.
But this one’s different. Sharper. Burned into the wood, not drawn.
I freeze.
“Poison,” I whisper into comms, “we’ve got spiral markings here. This isn’t just a hideout. It’s a goddamn staging ground.”
Then I hear it, soft, electronic. My earpiece buzzes.
MV’s voice filters in low and broken.“He’s baiting us. You’re not alone in that building.”
I raise my Glock and pivot because just down the hall, a shadow is moving.
The shadow moves again slowly, calculated, not like someone caught off guard, like someone is watching and waiting.
I signal Wendigo with a quick hand gesture. She nods, slipping left while I angle around the hallway to flank from the right. My heart hammers in my ears, but my hands are steady. I’ve done this before. I’ve cleared buildings in combat zones. But this is different. Whatever’s ahead isn’t charging, it’s waiting.
I take a breath and round the corner fast, gun raised.
And stop cold. It’s a thin, pale man dressed in ripped jeans and a shirt smeared with dried blood and dirt. His eyes are wild, glass-eyed, and twitchy, but the grin freezes the air in my lungs. It’s too wide, too wrong, like something broke inside him and never quite healed.
He’s holding two phones. One is MV’s burner model. The other is a cracked flip phone duct-taped to a walkie system. He’s talking into it, mumbling. The man doesn’t even flinch when he sees me.
He tilts his head and says, “She’s here. Told you she’d come.”
My trigger finger tightens. “Step away from the device.”
Wendigo enters from the other side, gun raised. “Do it now or I'll drop you.”
The man laughs, and then he says, clear as day, “Vale says the spiral’s waking up. Says you’re part of it. Says you don’t get to walk away this time.”
I thought I left Ghost behind to protect him. But maybe all I did was give the monster more room to grow.
That’s when I see the kid. A boy, maybe ten, curled in the corner behind a broken dresser. His wrists are bound. His mouth is duct-taped. His eyes are wide and terrified. He’s breathing, but barely. One wrong move, and this bastard might take him down just to send a message.
