Chapter - 65 - The Order of the Ashen Veil Declares War**
– September 16, 2030 – Hot Springs, 3:12 a.m.**
I'm asleep in my childhood bedroom, Remy's arm heavy across my waist, when every ward I ever carved into these walls screams at once.
The house shakes.
Dad's thunder rolls through the floorboards.
Remy and I are on the porch in under four seconds.
The night sky is wrong.
A perfect circle of absolute black hangs above the ridge (no stars, no moon, just void).
From it descend seven figures in ash-gray robes, faces hidden behind porcelain masks painted with weeping eyes.
The Order of the Ashen Veil.
Not hunters.
High Inquisitors.
The one in front lowers his hood.
The hunter from last night (face bruised, eyes burning with fanatic fire).
**Inquisitor:**
"Celeste Tsatoke.
By the authority of the Compact of 1712, the Accords of Prague, and the terrified screams of every vampire you ever humiliated…
You are hereby declared Anathema Primaris.
Surrender, or this town burns."
Behind him, six more masks glow with holy runes.
Behind me, my parents step onto the porch.
Dad cracks his knuckles; real thunder answers.
Mom racks the tamale shotgun.
**Dad (dry):**
"Kid, you bring the nicest people home."
Remy's already half-shifted, dire-coyote shadows pooling at his feet.
**Remy (mind-to-mind):**
"Pack's ten minutes out.
Calder wolves are coming hot."
I step off the porch.
Lightning crawls over my skin like it missed me.
**Celeste:**
"You picked the wrong night to threaten my mom's tamales."
I raise my hand.
The black circle in the sky fractures.
Because I just rewrote its permission settings with Deep Script.
The void circle collapses into a perfect violet lightning bolt that spears straight through the lead Inquisitor's mask.
He doesn't even have time to scream.
The other six scatter (fast, trained, terrifying).
Too slow.
I Blood Shift (not coyote this time).
Into the Ghost-Queen of Dacia, full armor, Thunder Crown blazing on my brow, three thousand years of drowned fury in my eyes.
The porch light flickers and dies.
Dad whistles low.
**Dad:**
"That's my girl."
Remy shifts fully (black-and-gold Alpha dire-coyote beside the drowned queen).
We move.
Six Inquisitors.
Two legends who just got married and are very protective of their in-laws.
It's not a fight.
It's an education.
One tries a binding circle of consecrated silver.
I step through it like it's tissue paper and speak one word in Deep Script.
The circle turns into butterflies made of lightning and regret.
Another summons angelic fire.
Remy eats it (literally catches it in his jaws and spits it back as coyote-gold hellfire).
The last one tries to run.
When the dust settles, six broken masks lie in the front yard.
The void circle is gone.
The stars come back.
Luna Calder and fifty Calder Coyote crest the ridge, late to the party but ready to bite anyway.
Luna takes one look at the carnage, the drowned-queen me, the smug coyote Remy, and my parents calmly reloading weapons on the porch.
**Luna (grinning):**
"I love family reunions."
I shift back to human, walk over to the lead Inquisitor's mask, and pick it up.
Carve a single line of Deep Script into the porcelain:
**"Come back with an army.
Or don't come back at all."**
Then I toss it into the sky.
It vanishes into a rift that closes with the sound of a slammed door.
Remy wraps his arms around me from behind.
**Remy (quiet, proud):**
"Coyote Club rule number seventeen:
When they threaten your mom's cooking,
you remind them who taught the sky manners."
Dad claps me on the shoulder.
**Dad:**
"Breakfast in ten.
Extra tamales for the Coyote's."
Hot Springs is safe.
The Order just learned a very expensive lesson.
And somewhere in the distance, the Ashen Veil is rewriting their entire doctrine with the words:
**DO NOT ENGAGE THE TSATOKES.**
Year two is officially spicy.
I'm just getting started.
The Night the Scales Woke Up
New Orleans smelled like spilled bourbon, river rot, and something metallic that clung to the back of my tongue.
I liked it. It meant I was close.
I crouched on the rusted fire escape of a crumbling warehouse in the Ninth Ward, salt round already chambered, silver-tipped stake taped under my left wrist like a promise. Below me, the vampire nest was throwing a party: bass so loud it rattled my teeth, red strobe lights bleeding through broken windows, and the wet, happy sounds of feeding.
My kind of Friday night.
Dad used to call them "fang raves."
Mom just called them Tuesday.
I checked the journal one last time, thumb brushing the worn leather cover. Page 187:
"Vampire blood ritual on the new moon. If the chalice runs black, run."
Tonight the moon was a clipped fingernail in the sky, and the chalice inside that warehouse had been black for an hour.
Time to ruin someone's evening.
I dropped three stories, landed cat-quiet on the gravel, and slipped through the side door.
The music hit like a fist. Bodies writhed under the strobes—some human, most not. I counted twelve vamps, easy. Too many for a solo hunter, but the girl chained to the altar in the middle wasn't going to wait for backup that didn't exist.
She was maybe fourteen, eyes wide, duct tape over her mouth, blood running from ritual cuts on her arms into a silver bowl.
The bowl was already black.
Shit.
The lead vampire (tall, pretty, dead) raised the bowl like a toast.
"To the thinning Veil," he crooned. "To the dragon who will never wake."
Dragon?
That word wasn't in the journal.
I stepped into the light, shotgun up.
"Wrong fairy tale, asshole."
Every head snapped toward me.
The pretty vampire smiled, fangs bright as neon. "Riley Kane. The last hunter. You're late."
I pulled the trigger.
Salt rounds exploded across the front row. Vamps screamed, skin bubbling. I vaulted the bar, rolled, came up with the stake already flying. It punched through Pretty Boy's heart mid-laugh. He turned to ash before he hit the floor.
Chaos.
Fangs everywhere. I moved like Dad taught me (salt, silver, fire, repeat).
Shotgun butt to a jaw, stake through a ribcage, holy water grenade that turned three vamps into screaming torches.
But there were too many.
One got behind me. Cold fingers closed around my throat.
"Sweet blood," it hissed. "Smells like—"
It never finished.
Because the girl on the altar screamed through the tape, and the black blood in the bowl ignited.
Green fire (impossible, wrong) roared up the chains, into her arms, into the air like dragon wings made of flame.
And then it hit me.
Pain like molten glass poured under my skin. I dropped to my knees, shotgun clattering away. My veins lit up under my forearms (black, then silver, then burning). Something ripped along my spine. Scales (actual scales) erupted across my shoulders, obsidian edged in gold, hot enough to smoke.
The vampires froze.
The girl on the altar stared at me with suddenly clear, ancient eyes.
The last thing I heard before the fire took my vision was a voice (not hers, not human) whispering inside my skull:
Welcome home, princess.
Then the warehouse exploded.
Not metaphorically.
Green flames punched through the roof, glass raining like deadly stars. I came to on my back in the alley, clothes half-burned to rags, skin covered in shimmering scales that faded even as I watched.
The girl was gone.
The vampires were ash.
And across my left collarbone, glowing like a brand, was a mark I'd never seen before:
A dragon coiled around an eclipsed sun.
Footsteps.
I rolled, reaching for a weapon that wasn't there, and found myself staring up at a guy who looked like he'd walked out of a gothic wet dream: black hair, storm-gray eyes, leather jacket older than my dad. Pale in a way that had nothing to do with moonlight.
He crouched, careful not to touch me.
"Riley Kane," he said, voice low and smooth and furious. "You just broke about seventeen laws of the Veil."
I tried to speak. Came out a croak.
He tilted his head, nostrils flaring like he was scenting something delicious and forbidden.
"And you," he added softly, "smell like dragon royalty. Which is impossible. They're extinct."
The scales on my arm flared again, answering him.
His pupils blew wide, fangs sliding down without permission.
"Fuck," he whispered.
Then, quieter: "You're going to be the death of me, princess."
I passed out smiling, because for the first time in ten years of hunting monsters,
I finally felt like one.