We went to an apartment building in a nicer part of the city, the sort of place that had already been gentrified and turned into a place for wealthier people to move into the city. Likely the lawyers and office workers for the nearby downtown, built onto the bones of an old warehouse like many places near the river. Misha had to show a fake police badge to even get us in the building, and even then was questioned about the backpack he wore.

  The desk boy gave us a pair of keys and a room number, and a short elevator ride later we were walking down a short hall that smelled vaguely of blood and rot as I asked, “how does The Lady get us here before the police so much?”

  “A good portion the buildings in this city belongs to her, she has agents at 911 centers to help keep calls going official, and she knows how to make bribes to make these things get ignored when they get past that to her contacts in the police,” Misha explained, stopping outside one of the doors in the hall as he started, “this is a pretty nice penthouse, in this case the security guard investigating the smell a neighbor reported was one of ours, lucky enough.”

  He didn’t let me ask anything else, instead unlocking the door and opening it just long enough for both of us to slip quickly into the apartment. The door closing back behind us, I immediately tried to avoid being overwhelmed by the sights and smells of the crime.

  The main room, a certified living room with a large glass wall of a window overlooking the city, almost had all the fake hardwood coated in dried blood. The furniture had all been pushed to the walls, and in the center of the room a macabre display had been made. A spike bolted into the floor as at the coffee shop, a man impaled on it, this one with his arms tied behind his back and the spike out his shoulder.

  Around him others had been killed, arms bound, bags over heads, naked with the skin peeled off them in various amounts and draped from the light fixtures. On the wall, painted in blood as last time, the numbers 1:4 done in large blocky letters. Below those: remember your sin.

  Fuck.

  Well, if I had any doubts left it was now confirmed it was certainly a threat against me, and now I knew the murders were connected with the locket and texts. Someone had a problem with me, had managed to sneak my locket from my pack’s old location, and was murdering half-ones around the city as a message.

  That meant they knew I was working with The Lady, they knew I’d end up seeing these.

  That wasn’t a comforting bit of information.

  I couldn’t tell anyone about this until I knew why.

  Misha saved me from the moment of panic, resting a hand on my shoulder as he comforted, “makes it better, this is pretty close to the worst I’ve seen. I think there’s a good chance everything from here’s going to get better.”

  “Lucky me,” I muttered, though I didn’t actually feel lucky at all.

  Misha took a coin from his pocket, holding it up carefully for a long moment before declaring, “heads I get the stake, tails I get the skinless people, good with you, beautiful?”

  “Works for me,” I muttered, having a bad feeling about both of them as Misha tossed the coin and let me see the result.

  Letting out a sigh of disappointment, even if neither option seemed particularly desirable, I walked to the man staked in the center. My head only coming to his chest, I had to stand on my toes to properly reach up and tilt his head down. Whites of the eyes stained bright red, lips sewn shut with more than a little tearing, signs of bruising on the neck.

  Yeah, I was fucking scared that was going to be what happened

  “Lips are sewn on those guys too?” I asked, looking back to Misha who had actually already cut the sutures on one of them.

  “Lips sewn, big metal thing put in the mouth?” Misha said two fingers deep in a mouth, seemingly equally confused and surprisingly blase about it as he looked up to me and asked, “you got any idea what’s going on here?”

  I didn’t answer at first, walking to him as I crouched to look at the largely skinned body. Where the skin was kept, how deep the cuts were made, how it was pulled away, all the tiny details almost twistingly recognizable. A shake of my head in disappointment at my answer, I looked up to Misha and told him, “you’re really not going to like this after last night.”

  “Yeah I was thinking I was getting too many staked bodies in my life already, but the skinning too? On a nice day like this too?” the man rattled off with a dry humor.

  “This is a Purist ritual, the sort of thing you don’t do unless you’re being overly dramatic and leaving a message. We didn’t even fucking practice this, it’s something older Purists learned as a traditional means of leaving a message. We barely got the theoretical explanation of this sort of thing, you know?” I explained, frowning as I tilted the body around and found a cut on the leg that was just too deep. Pointing it out and tracing the line for his perhaps too weak eyes, I explained, “the item in the mouth and sewing of the lips keeps them silent. The rest….well, I think you can put that together.”

  “Wait so you’re saying…” the man stopped, closing his eyes as he rose to his feet, let out a gagging and croaking noise while one hand fumbled to drag a trash can closer just in case “they were fucking alive?”

  “These guys didn’t do it right, like I said it’s more of a theory for most Purists, and I think they stopped whenever the half-one bled to death. It explains the blood and lack of other injuries though,” I admitted, sighing as I tried to not get hungry on the smell of blood. I’d just fucking ate, I couldn’t go acting like some rabid animal. Thinking on it further, I pointed to the man in the middle of the room and admitted, “he might have survived a bit longer, depending on how well they did it. That’s a lot of blood on the pole, so-”

  “Too many details,” Misha admitted, sounding like he was on the verge of throwing up as a large shiver ran through his body, “Jesus fuck me softly, I hate Purists, this is Purists right?”

  That was a good question, and while I couldn’t exactly be sure I didn’t really have a reason to think it wasn’t, especially with Hunter’s suspicions. A long moment of hesitation later admitting, “probably, but at the same time I can’t be sure? It seems too…well, organized for Purists. Someone’s making these spikes they’re using, Purists don’t usually have those materials, and I imagine they were stealthy in a city if they managed to do it like this without The Lady knowing who did it. Also, just…it feels too sloppy for Purists, I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “You said they didn’t exactly teach this,” the man pointed out, pulling out his phone as he began to walk around taking pictures.

  “Like I said too, this is for leaving a message, this is older than Purists, werewolves were doing this to keep medieval soldiers out of their territories,” I muttered, trying to desperately remember anything that might have helped. It was for leaving a message, impalement was a warning, flaying and removal of body parts was a sign there was a hidden message. Why mix the two? Why so many people at a time, the tradition was flaying one person, maybe ripping their lungs out their back or dismemberment, why all this trouble?

  Get the message across clearer, and look more fucked up.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  This guy didn’t care about tradition, he didn’t fucking care about Purist teachings, he was using them to deliver a message in the most dramatic way possible.

  “There’s a hidden message somewhere,” I muttered, starting to pace the room looking around for any sign of something, “look for anything weird, this all means he’s left a message somewhere.”

  Misha looked ready to argue before he sighed and told me, “if you know any idea on finding this faster please let me know. I was hoping to have plans for being anywhere that wasn’t here.”

  I couldn’t agree more on principle alone, and was about to offer the easiest solution when I knew how bad an idea it was. Purist rune magic would have been able to locate something hidden, tell me a lot of what to do.

  It was also, well, Purist, and I couldn’t exactly trust Misha to not freak out about that. He hated the Purists, fucking despised them, and would have had a pretty good reason to hate me too if I used it.

  He’d also seemed…well, like he trusted me, and maybe that was worth it, maybe a small push on boundaries but worth it all the same. Well, a big push, but one that I could brush off as something I was taught by Elizabeth or Vergil or something if I actually needed to.

  It wouldn’t have worked, but I could pretend it would.

  “I…I might be able to do something, but you have to promise not to panic,” I said slowly, walking to the edge of the puddles of blood. Crouching on the ground, I didn’t wait for his answer as I dipped two fingers in blood that wasn’t mine and started painting the familiar runes.

  A circle to channel my faith through, the phases of the moon around it to show devotion to the first to love a werewolf. Inside paint the name of the god I called upon, in this case the Creeping Shadow, for whom all that hides is known. My hand resting gently over the carved symbol, I closed my eyes and after a brief prayer this would still work began my true prayer, “Creeping Shadow, you who cover the Silver Moon’s eye in its time each month and are beat back each attempt, hear my call. Take from this unhallowed land and my devoted veins, and show me that which has been hidden from searching eyes.”

  Nothing happened for a moment, no lights, no feeling of divine presence, not even the slightest tinge of anything noticing me or even thinking to punish me for my actions. A bolt of fear shot through my chest, leaving an empty void that felt abandoned as I must have been in that moment. Only as I was about to give up hope and pull away that I felt the first drops drawn from my veins, saw the blood from the ground going into the circle and then to the shadows it created. Warm, comforting, like a lover’s version of The Lady’s bite, even as my vision shifted and I looked around the room.

  A bookshelf on one wall looked out of place, looking as though an aura now hung around it that neither looked like anything nor was too hard to notice. Not abandoned, not alone even if Misha would reject me for this, I nodded in that direction and told my mentor, “check there,” even as I broke the connection.

  My mind felt fuzzy in the brief moment it took my vision to fix itself, and by the time I’d recovered Misha was sliding the bookcase to the side. Seemingly built on treads, it revealed a painfully white looking room on the other side as Misha announced, “world’s worst located safe room, having it in plain view of the fucking front door.”

  I didn’t dare to make a comment about the obvious lack of safety the room provided anyway, instead silently walking over to the man as he entered the room. Small, it had a metal framed bed that might have been at home in a movie’s psyche ward, as well as a metal table and chair. On the table, laid out in a large pile, rested several piles of money Misha immediately took up as well as a few pill bottles and a large cardboard box.

  Misha juggled two stacks of the money for half a second, and his smile almost immediately broke as he froze and ran his thumb’s nail along one stack of the bills. Neutrality turned to a frown, and he ripped the edge off one bill and placed it on his tongue, spitting out the bill and letting out a groan of defeat.

  “Counterfeit, and badly done,” he said, holding the bills out for me as I hesitantly took them up. Taking my hand in his, he had me run my thumb like he had and explained, “the weight being off is a bit more obvious here because how many there are, but the texture’s also a problem. See how that feels, very smooth? Real money is made out of linen and cotton, whoever did this cheaped out, used a cotton polyester blend, you can taste it if you want.”

  I nodded, not sure what else to do as I gently licked the bill, not even fully sure what I was supposed to taste from it even with my senses. Had he fucking thought I’d tasted enough money to know when something was off? What was even the plan here?

  “Shame though, if it was well made I’d risk having it,” Misha admitted, tossing the money on the ground before picking up one of the pill bottles. Curious eyes ran over the label for a moment, seeming to consider it, and finally reached over to slide it in my jacket’s pocket as he said, “For me later. Do you think the box is what we’re looking for?”

  “Don’t think our guy decided to hide pills and counterfeit money,” I pointed out, frowning as I watched over, my hands gently resting on the box. Hands shaking from nerves I slowly opened the box up, gently reaching in as I pulled out the t-shirt inside.

  Scents flooded the air like a train hitting me: dirt, mud, rats and droppings, the scents of a person I didn’t recognize. A scent laid below that, my own blood and a man’s, and I dropped the shirt and as I stumbled back from it like it was an angry copperhead.

  My heart was a stone in my chest, my breath shook and felt like it was painful to take a deep breath, my vision became that of a wolf. Misha said something and I heard it, understood it, and didn’t know what it was all at the same time. He walked towards me and I backed farther up, I tried to say something and it came out as a wounded animal pleading for mercy, and I turned and left the room.

  I fell, I stumbled, slipped in blood on the faux wooden floor and crawled and slipped through it as my body tried to keep going at its slow pace like it was stuck on autopilot. Blood, blood covering me, blood getting over me, not delicious, not needed, coating me, overwhelming. I needed to get it gone, I couldn’t be here, I didn’t want this.

  My actions turned frantic, moving to a wall, grabbing a trash can, vomiting even as I realized I’d started crying like it was the most distant thing in the world.

  My stomach emptied, my head swirled, and I hung onto the trash can for dear life as I sobbed and felt fur and claws wishing to grow. I wanted to fight, the wolf wanted to run, I wanted to run, the wolf wanted to run, we wanted to rip everything to shreds, we wanted to hide in a corner and die. It couldn’t have been him, he was dead, it couldn’t have been him, we’d killed him. We ate his heart, his spirit was gone, he was dead, it couldn’t have been him.

  The thought rotated in my mind, a twisted knife even as I became slowly aware of Misha trying to talk to me. Instructing my breathing, keeping his distance, telling me he was there, to focus on him. It didn’t help, and it took all the willpower I had not to scream at him to shut up until my mind finally steadied.

  My voice was still shaking, everything was still shaking, I muttered, “I’m sorry,” on a repeating chorus until I could hear Misha speaking.

  He took a while to, or perhaps was stunned for a few seconds that felt like minutes, and when he eventually did he asked twice, “what are we dealing with, Mary? How do we stop it?”

  “I can’t tell you, I don’t know,” I said quickly, knowing I couldn’t no matter what I did.

  He’d hate me for it, he’d kill me, I’d fucking deserved it for what I’d done, I’d broken the one rule. He’d hate me, and then I wouldn’t have anyone to help me.

  It couldn’t be Alpha.

  Misha stepped closer, a hand raised slowly as he told me, “just breathe, Mary, listen to my voice. Let’s breathe together, deep breaths in and deep breaths out.”

  I ignored him at first, until with some prompting I started with the first breath and after several false starts could halfway follow his set rhythm. An impossibly deep breath that seemed to go on forever, a long pause where he made me hold it, and an even longer breath out. Calm not so much entering me as fear dulled its edge and allowed me to properly think. Remaining still, a constant presence somewhere in the back of my head, like a cord pulled tight and ready to snap at the first chance it was given, I watched a dozen emotions cross through Misha’s face as he kept a small distance from me.

  Finally, slowly sliding the backpack from his shoulder, he pulled a large plastic bag of clothes he held out for me. I looked at them blankly, knowing they were mine and too tense to process why they were offered, and eventually he told me, “go into the bathroom, rinse off any blood, then get changed. Am I understood?”

  I nodded, taking my clothes from him and stumbling to my feet and into the bathroom. There I stripped my clothes, quickly locked the door behind me, rinsed my hands and face in the sink, ran my boots under the bathtub faucet, and tried to clear my head. Tried to not think of the idea this was Alpha, trying to think of an alternate explanation, trying to come up with something that made this all a sick joke.

  My brain wouldn’t let me, kept creeping back to the idea he was back from the dead, I’d open the door and he’d be standing there waiting for me.

  The worry on my mind crept open the bathroom door and left with one hand growing claws I quickly pulled back, handing Misha the bag of my bloody clothes as I for a final time said, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” the man said slowly, furrowing his brow as he slowly asked, “do you…do you need to talk about that? What just happened?”

  “I can’t,” I said slowly, the words all I could think to say in response.

  Misha nodded, and after a moment said, “I’ll tell The Lady we think it’s Purists, but can’t tell much else from this. I…let’s go for a drive, clear your head, see if we can’t find something to do to clear your head.”