After exploring the room, Sloane Hayes made her way to the parking lot.
A neat row of cars waited beneath the fading morning haze, but her Porsche Macan GTS dominated the space without trying. Gunmetal grey—the color of condensed shadow—it sat in its reserved slot with a low, authoritative purr still echoing from the engine, as if the vehicle itself were impatient. Among sensible sedans and rugged, government-issue SUVs, it looked like a panther trapped in a kennel.
Beside it stood James Wilson's Mitsubishi Shogun, matte-black and angular, its utilitarian bulk radiating quiet endurance. James leaned casually against the driver's door, phone in hand, eyes alert. On the other side was Eleanor Thompson's Land Rover Discovery, its Keswick Green paint catching the light. The color matched her long black coat perfectly that day, the contrast almost intentional—as though she had planned the symmetry.
Without unnecessary conversation, each of them entered their vehicles. Engines turned over in sequence, and moments later, the three cars rolled out, following the geographical coordinates James had received on his phone.
The mountain terrain was unforgiving.
The road narrowed into tight twists and blind turns, jagged rock faces rising on one side and steep drop-offs yawning on the other. Tires groaned against uneven gravel and fractured asphalt, suspension systems working overtime. It wasn't until they reached the end of the mountain pass that the road smoothed into clean tarmac. As they descended, the air cleared, thinning into something sharp and bright. The sun blistered overhead, catching shallow puddles along the roadside and turning them into glimmering mirrors under the noontime glare.
Another road branched off—barely marked, almost forgotten. According to Google Maps, it led directly to their destination. James slowed, checked his phone once more, then took the lead.
The road emptied into what appeared to be an abandoned park.
There was no gate at the entrance, no signage, no security guard—only a wide clearing flanked by skeletal trees and a large river cutting through the land like a dark vein. A few scattered settlements dotted the road nearby, though they weren't heavily populated. The houses closest to the park were entirely deserted. Vines crept up cracked walls, roofs sagged under years of neglect, and windows stared blankly, dark and hollow. Several cars sat abandoned too, tires deflated, metal eaten away by rust as though time itself had decided to leave them behind.
Near the riverbank, cattle grazed lazily, heads down, unbothered. There was no herder in sight.
The three vehicles parked just short of the park's interior. As soon as they stepped out, the silence pressed in—thick, unnatural. James checked his phone again.
It buzzed.
This time, the message came from a number he recognized. The same number again but with more clearer instructions, one that could lead a blind man to find something.
No text. No explanation.
Only a fresh set of geographical coordinates—and a single image.
The photo was low-resolution and poorly lit, taken in haste. It showed a military-grade portable kennel unit, the kind used for working dogs during field operations. The metal frame was unmistakable. But behind the wire mesh, something else stared back.
Two small, phosphorescent eyes reflected the camera flash.
Below them, a sleek, grey body coiled unnaturally—too smooth, too serpentine to belong to anything familiar. Pressed against the bars was a limb that did not belong to any known animal: five fingers, clawed, disturbingly human in shape.
No one spoke.
They followed the coordinates on foot, deeper into the park, until they reached one of the abandoned houses near the tree line. The door hung open, creaking softly as the wind passed through. Inside, the air smelled stale—damp earth and decay. Furniture lay overturned, dust thick enough to preserve footprints.
Behind the house, partially concealed by tall grass, they found it.
The kennel.
It stood empty.
The metal door was bent outward, warped by force from the inside. Deep scratches scored the frame, the marks uneven and violent. The ground around it told a story the image no longer could. Large footprints—far too big to belong to a dog—pressed into the soil, leading away from the kennel. Between them, the grass was flattened into a long, winding trail, as though something heavy had slithered continuously across the ground.
The trail led straight toward the river.
They encountered villagers not far from the settlement road. The people were wary, eyes darting, hands clenched tightly around rosaries and worn charms. When questioned, they avoided direct answers.
They claimed they saw nothing.
They said they stayed locked inside after sunset.
Because at night, their god walked.
It moved through the fields and along the riverbanks, searching for offerings. Sacrifices. And those who failed to respect it did not leave signs behind—only silence.
The river rippled quietly in the distance, reflecting the harsh midday sun.
And somewhere beneath its surface, something had learned how to escape a cage.
The drizzle had settled into a fine, persistent mist that beaded on the waxed canvas of James's jacket and dampened the shoulders of Eleanor's wool coat. They were a hundred yards from the riverbank, a safe distance from the murmuring villagers and Sloane's fruitless candy diplomacy. James was squatting in the mud, a line of dark, wet stones laid on a scrap of tarp before him. He compared each to a photograph on his tablet—the iridescent mineral from the first victim's nails.
Eleanor watched his broad back, the focused tilt of his head. The professional in her acknowledged his diligence. The woman she'd been five years ago still felt the pull of that familiar silhouette. She shoved the feeling down, deep into the compartment where she kept all useless things.
A buzz from her phone fractured the quiet. Then another. She pulled it from her pocket. The first was a text from a contact listed as Sofia M.
Sofia Martinez: Peripheral case just surfaced. Middle-school girl killed her friend with a pencil sharpener. Says she was "initiated into the Werewolf Club" and needed a trophy—the victim's hand. Mentions older, charismatic recruiters. Police are writing it off as a psycho-kid incident, but I see the pattern. Same glorification of pack violence. Same recruitment. They're weaponizing the young.
Before the cold knot in her stomach could fully form, a news alert flashed on her screen. The headline said it all: "Authorities Investigate Disturbing Middle-School Homicide Linked to Alleged 'Werewolf Club.'" It was out. The grotesque fairy tale was in the wild.
She read it quickly, the journalistic sanitization of the horror making it somehow worse. 'Psychological instability.' 'Violent fantasy content.' They were building a cage of understandable human pathology around something that was neither understandable nor entirely human. They were dismissing the one true thing the girl had said: the name.
---
Meanwhile, at the edge of the village clearing, Sloane Hayes was engaged in a different kind of forensic analysis: child psychology with a side of confectionery bribery. Having changed from her professional wear into a blush-pink sweat set that made her look like a lost yoga instructor, she stood out against the drab landscape like a tropical flower in a gravel pit.
Two children—a girl of about seven with fiercely braided hair and a younger boy clutching a grubby stuffed rabbit—stood before her, their eyes locked on the king-sized bag of assorted candies she held aloft like the torch of liberty.
"Alright, junior intelligence operatives," Sloane said, deploying her best boardroom-negotiation smile. "Strategic information exchange. You tell me about the big snake people have seen near the river—the shiny one that moves like a rope but isn't a rope—and you get a candy. Per word."
The children looked at each other, then back at the candy. The young girl, whose name was Ama, slowly held out her hand, fingers splayed. She began to count, touching each fingertip with solemn deliberation. "Mom. Said. We. Should. Not. Accept. Gifts. From. Strangers." She paused, meeting Sloane's expectant gaze with unnerving calm. "I said nine words. I deserve nine candies."
Sloane's smile faltered. She'd been outflanked by a second-grader employing literal contract law. "That's… not how the candy incentive program works. The words have to be about the snake."
Ama shrugged, her hand still outstretched. "Your rules were unclear. 'Whoever tells me about the big snake gets a candy per word.' I told you about my mom's rule. That is a word-related statement. Nine words." Her logic was ironclad.
The little boy, Kojo, nudged Ama and whispered something too low for Sloane to hear. Ama nodded sagely. "Kojo says you don't seem like a kind lady. Kind ladies give candy first to build trust. They don't negotiate like… like city people."
Sloane felt a profound, surreal sense of defeat. These children had seen through her performative charm to the transactional engine beneath. They weren't interested in her salad of questions; they'd gone straight for the tea of her candy supply and found her terms wanting. With a sigh that came from the depths of her legal soul, she doled out nine brightly wrapped sweets into Ama's waiting hand. Ama promptly divided them, giving four to Kojo.
"The snake," Sloane tried again, her bargaining position critically weakened. "Just a detail. Is it long? Does it have legs?"
Ama popped a candy in her mouth, sucking thoughtfully. "It moves in the water at night. It doesn't hiss. It… sings. A bad song. Grandpa says it's an old thing that woke up because the woods are angry." Having dispensed what she clearly considered a monumental effort for nine candies, she took Kojo's hand. "Come on. We have to help Mama." They turned and scampered back toward the village huts, leaving Sloane standing in the mist with a half-empty candy bag and a useless, poetic clue about a singing snake.
---
Eleanor, having read the news report, looked from her phone to James, then past him to where Sloane was now brushing dirt from her pink sweatpants with an expression of profound irritation. The children were gone. This avenue was closed.
Decision made, Eleanor strode over to James. She didn't speak, simply shoved her phone's screen toward his face, the news article displayed.
"New report," she said, her voice flat, a controlled contrast to the chaos on the screen.
James stood, his knees cracking faintly. He took the phone from her, his fingers brushing hers. A static charge, small and unwelcome, passed between them. His eyes scanned the text, his face hardening with each paragraph. She saw the exact moment he moved from detective to pack enforcer—a subtle tightening around his eyes, a stillness in his posture.
"Why would a teenage girl commit such a crime?" Eleanor asked. She wasn't asking for the police's rationale. She was asking for his, for the understanding that lived in the blood and bone of their world.
He handed the phone back. "It's glory for her. She's being used because she's still young, impressionable. The lines between right, wrong, and powerful are blurry at that age."
It was a good answer. A human answer. But it wasn't complete.
"And what do they benefit from that?" she pressed. "The recruiters."
"Pure followers," James said, his gaze drifting to the mist-shrouded village. "Lost kids who want to belong to something stronger than their boring, powerless lives. These teen supernatural novels have glorified the idea for a decade. They're priming the audience."
"Then they'll abandon her," Eleanor concluded, the logic cold and clear. "After she's served her purpose. Taken her trophy. Proved her loyalty. She becomes a liability, a story with a face."
James nodded slowly, a grim acceptance. "Standard cult methodology. Burn the bridge once you've crossed it."
"Like a certain person did five years ago."
The words were out before she could stop them, quiet and sharp as a scalpel. James flinched as if she'd physically cut him. His eyes snapped to hers, the grey stormy with a pain she hadn't meant to conjure. The air between them crackled with the old, unhealed wound, laid bare beside this new, fresh atrocity.
Before either could speak—to retaliate or retract—Sloane Hayes inserted herself between them, a splash of defeated pink in the dull landscape. "Well, my foray into junior anthropology was a bust. The local urchins have the bargaining skills of mini-CEOs and the moral framework of seasoned contracts lawyers. All I got was a cryptic review of my character and a clue about a 'singing snake.'" She glanced at the taut silence between them, then at Eleanor's phone. "What's the verdict here? You two look like you're about to declare a silent war over a bad signal."
Eleanor took a step back, breaking the fraught intensity. "A war on a different front," she said, showing Sloane the news headline.
Sloane's playful frustration vanished, replaced by professional intensity. She skimmed the article. "A pencil sharpener? That's… intimate. Messy. Not the tool of someone fantasizing about claws." She looked from the stubborn, silent villagers to the news report. "The river rocks and mythical herpetology can wait. This can't. If there's a recruitment pipeline targeting children, it's the soft underbelly of this whole operation. Kids will talk. And they'll have seen things adults are told to ignore."
It was the permission, the redirect, they needed. James gave a terse nod. "The school. Now."
---
Langley Middle School was a block of 1960s brick squatting behind a high iron fence, now cordoned with fluttering police tape. The atmosphere was one of shell-shocked silence, the usual playground shouts smothered by the day's events. In the nearly empty visitor's lot, a single, familiar car was parked: a sleek, grey Tesla Model 3.
As James's Shogun and Eleanor's Discovery pulled in next to it, the Tesla's driver door opened. Sofia Martinez emerged. She was a woman in her late thirties, with a severe, intelligent beauty, her dark hair pulled into a tight bun. She wore a tailored pantsuit under a trench coat—the uniform of a senior child protection psychologist attached to the regional major crimes unit. She was also, not coincidentally, one of Eleanor's most trusted human contacts, a woman who had pieced together enough of the hidden world to know when a myth was being used as a manual.
"James, Eleanor," Sofia greeted, her voice low. She ignored Sloane's raised eyebrow. "I've just come from the interview. It's worse than the report. The details she provides about the 'initiation ceremony'… it's not just play-acting. It includes specific, accurate references to pack hierarchy and territory marking rituals that aren't in any book."
"Where's the girl now?" James asked, his voice the soft, dangerous rumble of an Alpha protecting the young.
"Secure psychiatric ward. Sedated. The police think she's psychotic. I think she's terrified of the people who told her she was becoming a god."
"We need to see her," Eleanor stated.
"You will. But first," Sofia said, turning to her Tesla. She tapped the console screen, and the trunk lid swung open silently. Inside, next to a professional briefcase, was a cardboard evidence box. "This was delivered to my office this morning. Anonymous courier. It's related to a different case I'm consulting on—a corporate whistleblower situation."
She lifted the lid. Inside were not toys or schoolbooks, but legal and financial documents. On top was a client agreement from a law firm: Carter & Vale, LLP. The client was a shell company named Aethon Biomedical Holdings.
James froze. He pulled out his phone, brought up a photo from his investigation board—a blurry screenshot of a corporate registry. He compared it to the document. "Aethon Biomedical. That's the shell company that owns the warehouse where we traced the chemical precursors for the synthetic pheromone."
Eleanor's mind made the connection instantly, the convergence point snapping into focus with almost physical force. "Its lawyer," she said, the words dropping like stones.
Sofia nodded, confirming the unspoken thought. "The managing partner on the Aethon account is Benjamin Carter. He's been their counsel of record for three years." She pulled another document from the box—a land survey map. "And in a stunning coincidence, Carter & Vale is currently representing the opposing party in a contentious land dispute. A dispute over a parcel of forest and cave systems adjacent to a military base. The counsel for the plaintiffs in that case is…"
"Margaret Hughes," James finished, the pieces locking into a terrifying puzzle.
The shell company making the wolf-masking pheromones. The lawyer for that company, Benjamin Carter. The land he was fighting over in court, right next to the first murder. The lawyer on the other side of that fight: Maggie, Gareth's ex-wife, Chloe's protector.
It wasn't a coincidence. It was a blueprint.
The drizzle coated the papers in Sofia's hands. The synthetic stink of Wolfsbane-722, the ritualistic murder in the woods, the recruited child in the school behind them—all of it was connected by lines on a corporate flowchart and a contested property deed.
"The conspiracy isn't just in the forest or a lab," Eleanor said, her voice hollow with the scale of it. "It's in a law office."
James looked from the school, where a child had been turned into a weapon, to the documents linking a lawyer to a biochemical weapons shell company. The war had many fronts, and they had just been outflanked in plain sight.
-----
The call shattered the midnight quiet, not with a scream, but with the static-bitten urgency of police radio traffic. Major incident. A82 northbound. Single vehicle collision with stationary object. One fatality confirmed.
By the time James's Shogun and Eleanor's Discovery pulled onto the damp shoulder, the scene was an island of violent illumination in the deep Scottish dark. Strobing emergency lights painted the night in frantic pulses of blue and amber. A late-running regional bus, parked neatly and completely undamaged on the gravel verge, sat with its interior lights on, engine off. Directly in front of it, as if it had gently rolled to a stop against a wall, was a sleek, dark blue Jaguar XF. The Jaguar's front end was catastrophically compressed, not by the bus's rigid bumper, but as if it had hit a concrete bridge abutment at high speed. The bus's paint was unmarked.
Rain, fine and persistent, misted the air, catching in the light beams like falling diamonds.
"Major General Peter Covington," James stated, his voice flat as he read from his phone. The screen's glow lit the hard planes of his face. "Deputy Commander of Whitemoor. Was returning from a 'private dining engagement' in Inverness."
Eleanor's gaze swept from the pristine bus to the destroyed Jaguar. The physics were impossible. "A stationary object," she murmured, echoing the radio call. "But the bus isn't the object."
The narrative was thin and fraying at the edges. The bus driver, a man named Arnold Finch, stood calmly by a patrol car, giving a statement in a monotone. Saw the car swerving… it just veered off and hit the embankment there… I pulled over to render aid. He gestured not to the front of his bus, but to a spot of torn earth and shattered headlight glass on the roadside embankment, well clear of his vehicle. There were no passengers. Not a single one. The bus was empty, its schedule run completed for the night.
"Where are your passengers?" James asked, stepping toward the driver, his badge held up.
Finch blinked slowly. "Dropped the last at the depot in town. I was returning the bus to the yard. Just me." His story was simple, clean, and left no loose ends.
Eleanor moved past the narrative. She approached the Jaguar, her boots crunching on gritty safety glass from its own lights. The smells were sharp: scorched metal, coolant, the ozone-stink of deployed airbags, and the coppery, unmistakable scent of fresh blood. But as she neared the crushed driver's side window, another note surfaced through the rain-washed air. Faint, almost erased, but there—a floral sweetness with a bitter, metallic core that made her sinuses tighten.
Wolfsbane-722.
James was at her side in an instant. He inhaled once, sharply. "It's here."
Eleanor nodded, already pulling out her evidence kit. She swabbed the Jaguar's intact passenger window, the leather of the undamaged seats. The Major General's body was still pinned in the wreck. Her focus was on the invisible. A traffic investigator approached, looking confused.
"Weird one. Impact point's all wrong for hitting the bus. Looks like he lost control, hit the embankment. Bus driver just happened to be there."
"A coincidence," Eleanor said, her tone dangerously neutral.
"Seems so. Medical episode, maybe. We'll run the tox."
Eleanor didn't bother arguing. She took her samples and walked to the point of impact on the embankment. The dirt was gouged, a small tree sapling snapped. But there were no corresponding marks on the bus, parked five feet away. The Jaguar had hit the earth, hard, and alone.
Back at the cars, James met her, his expression grim. "No bus collision. No witnesses. No collateral damage. Just a clean, solo crash."
"A staged solo crash," Eleanor corrected, holding up a vial. "He was dosed with Wolfsbane-722. Paralyzed or in cardiac arrest before he ever left the road. The car was aimed at the embankment. The bus and its solitary driver are set dressing. A prop to explain why someone might have been there to 'discover' the crash so quickly, and to muddy the scene."
She looked at the silent, empty bus, its driver now sipping tea from a thermos, his story flawless and unshakable. The horror was in its neatness. The second body wasn't just a message; it was a demonstration of total control. They could stage a public accident without a single real witness, using people who didn't know they were actors and a vehicle that never touched the victim. They weren't just editing their enemies out; they were rewriting reality around the deletions.
The Wolfsbane-722 was the murder weapon. The embankment was the mechanism. The silent, empty bus was the perfect, unnatural alibi.