The world shattered into noise and motion.
The gunshot's echo was still ringing in the cramped storage room when Kaelen moved. He was a blur of controlled violence. One hand snagged Elena's dropped phone, crushing it in his grip with a sickening crackle of plastic before tossing the dead pieces into the dark corner. The other hand clamped around her upper arm, his grip like iron.
"Move. Now. Quietly." His voice was a low vibration against the new sounds from below: shouts, the thud of doors being kicked in, a woman's sharp cry cut short.
He didn't head for the stairwell. Instead, he pulled her deeper into the hallway, away from the source of the commotion, toward the building's rear. Elena stumbled, her mind struggling to process. The chemical smell was stronger here, carried by the air rushing up the stairwell. It burned her nostrils.
"My apartment—" she started, a stupid, automatic thought.
"Gone," Kaelen bit out, not looking back. He paused at a nondescript door marked 'Maintenance.' It was locked. He didn't bother with a key. A sharp, twisting jerk of his wrist, and the deadbolt ripped free from the frame with a splintering shriek that seemed deafening.
He shoved her through into pitch darkness. The space beyond was a narrow vertical shaft, smelling of dust and damp concrete. A rusty metal ladder bolted to the wall led up into deeper blackness and down into a pool of shadow.
"Up," he ordered, his body blocking the doorway behind them. "To the roof. Don't stop. Don't look down."
Elena's hands found the cold, gritty rungs. She climbed. Fear lent her a terrible, clumsy strength. The sounds from the floors below were muffled here, but she could hear the systematic chaos of a search: boots on wood, the crash of overturning furniture, curt, professional commands. They were sweeping the building. Room by room.
She climbed, the metal groaning under her weight. Below, she heard the maintenance door slam open again, followed by a crisp, amplified voice. "Contact rear stairwell! Possible ascent!"
A beam of blinding white light lanced up the shaft, missing her feet by inches. It wasn't a flashlight. It was sharper, harsher, tinged with a faint blue edge.
"Faster," Kaelen's voice growled from just beneath her. He was on the ladder too, moving with a predator's silent grace.
She scrambled upwards, her palms scraping against rust. The light beam tracked upwards, catching the edge of her shoe. A voice, calm and emotionless, called out, "Halt. Department of Paranormal Affairs. You are surrounded."
Kaelen's answer was a snarl that seemed to vibrate in the enclosed space. It wasn't entirely human. It was a challenge, a dismissal of their authority.
A different sound followed: a pneumatic hiss and a thwump. Something small and metallic zinged off the ladder rung next to Elena's hand, sparking. A dart? A tracer? She didn't wait to find out.
Her head slammed into a trapdoor above. She fumbled, pushed. It was heavy, secured from the outside. Panic seized her lungs.
A hand reached past her shoulder, Kaelen's arm stretching impossibly long. His fingers dug into the seam between the door and the frame. There was a sound of straining metal, then a sharp crack as the external latch broke. He heaved, and the trapdoor flew open, letting in a gust of cold, foggy night air and the distant orange glow of the city.
Elena hauled herself out onto the gravel-covered roof. The world tilted. They were five stories up. The harbor fog had rolled in thick, reducing the surrounding rooftops to vague, dark shapes. Lights from the streets below were smeared halos in the mist.
Kaelen emerged behind her, pulling the broken trapdoor mostly closed. He didn't pause. "This way. Don't think, just run."
He took off across the roof, not toward the street front, but toward the back of the building, where a narrow gap separated it from the next warehouse over. The gap was at least ten feet across, a yawning chasm of fog and darkness.
Elena froze at the edge. "I can't—"
He was already in motion. In two strides, he launched himself across the gap. It wasn't a jump; it was a powerful, fluid explosion of muscle. He cleared the distance easily, landing in a crouch on the opposite roof, the gravel barely shifting under his weight. He turned, his eyes catching the distant light, glowing like banked coals.
"You can. Because you have to." His voice carried across the gap, stripped of all patience. "They will not take you alive if they can help it. They'll pump you full of suppressants and take you apart in a lab to see what makes you tick. Now jump."
A clang from the trapdoor behind her. It was being forced open.
A primal terror, deeper than the fear of the fall, took over. She backed up two steps, a desperate prayer on her lips, and ran.
Her foot left the edge. For a heart-stopping moment, there was only the cold, wet air and the terrifying emptiness beneath her. Then her leading foot struck the opposite roof, but she had no momentum, no grace. She pitched forward, gravel skidding, her arms flailing.
A hand snapped out and caught the front of her coat, arresting her fall mere inches from tumbling over the far side. Kaelen hauled her upright as if she weighed nothing. His face was a mask of fierce concentration. "Keep moving."
They traversed two more rooftops, jumping over smaller alleys, moving deeper into the industrial maze of the old district. Kaelen led with an uncanny certainty, avoiding skylights, staying low where the fog thinned. Once, he froze, pulling her down behind a ventilation unit. Below, on a parallel street, a white van identical to the one from outside her shop rolled slowly by, a spotlight sweeping the building fronts.
Finally, he guided her to a rusted, external fire escape on the side of a derelict cannery. They descended into a shadow-clogged alley that reeked of brine and rotting fish. He stopped at a heavy metal door, its green paint peeling. A series of sharp, distinct raps—a pattern. A moment later, the door opened a crack. A pair of wary, dark eyes assessed them before it swung open wider.
Kaelen pushed Elena inside first. The space beyond was a small, windowless workshop, cluttered with machine parts and smelling of oil, old wood, and, faintly, wet dog. The man who let them in was stocky, with a beard and thick arms covered in faded tattoos. He nodded at Kaelen, his gaze sweeping over Elena with open curiosity and a hint of concern.
"They're sweeping the grid, Alpha," the man said, his voice gravelly. "DPAC vans all over the district. Heard they picked up a few from the flophouse on Dufferin Street."
Kaelen grunted, leaning against a workbench, his breathing only slightly elevated. Elena, by contrast, was trembling violently, her lungs burning. The adrenaline was receding, leaving a hollow, sick feeling in its wake.
"This is Rourke," Kaelen said, gesturing vaguely. "He'll keep watch. You're safe here for a few hours."
"Safe?" Elena's voice was a ragged whisper. She looked at the crushed remains of her phone on the floor where Kaelen had dropped it. Her shop, her apartment, her life—all of it was back there, in the path of those clean, chemical-smelling men with their blue-tinted lights. "Who were they? What do they want?"
"I told you. The Purifiers. A faction of DPAC." Kaelen's gaze was relentless. "They believe anything touched by the Gloom is a contaminant to be scrubbed clean. You, with your little spark of power, you're a walking infection to them."
"And you?" she shot back, anger finally breaking through the shock. "What am I to you? Why did you… help me?" Help felt like the wrong word. He had dragged her, commanded her, upended her life.
Kaelen was silent for a long moment, his gold-flecked eyes studying her as if seeing something new. "The thing that was in your building," he said finally, his voice lower. "It was a Ghoul. Not a smart one, but drawn to places of old death and weak walls between worlds. It was also drawn to you. Your energy is like a lure, Elena Vance. Chaotic, unshielded. Letting the Purifiers have you would be a waste. And letting a Ghoul, or something worse, find you first…" He shook his head. "You're a problem. But you might be a useful problem."
Useful. The word was colder than the rooftop air. She was a tool, or a potential weapon, in some hidden war she didn't understand.
"What now?" she asked, her defiance deflating into exhaustion.
"Now," Kaelen said, pushing off from the workbench, his presence once again dominating the small room, "you decide. Rourke can show you a drain tunnel that leads to the freight yards. You can run, try to disappear. Maybe you'll make it a week before something finds you, or the Purifiers pick up your scent again." He took a step closer. "Or you come with me. You learn what you are. You learn to control that spark before it burns you and everyone around you to ash. It won't be safe. It will hurt. But you might live long enough to find out why all of this is happening to you."
He left the choice hanging in the oily air of the workshop. Outside, in the distance, a siren wailed, cutting through the fog. A reminder that the world she knew was gone.
Elena looked from Kaelen's unreadable face to Rourke's watchful one, then down at her own scraped, trembling hands. The memory of the etched symbol, the black stain, the journal's words, all coiled inside her. Running meant living in fear of every shadow. Going with him meant walking directly into the heart of the darkness.
She took a shuddering breath.
"Where do we start?"