Chapter 14: The Riverside Stakeout
Lucius
The docks smelled of diesel and deception.
I crouched on a warehouse roof overlooking the Danube's commercial piers, letting Enhanced Senses catalog the night. The vampire spectrum showed heat signatures and heartbeats. The Lycan additions—courtesy of Partial Transformation—added layers of scent and sound I'd never experienced before.
Rust. Fish. Oil. Blood, old and faint, from some violence weeks past.
And underneath it all: Lycan.
Blood Appraisal painted the night shift workers in floating numbers. Most were human—[ 2-5 BP ] signatures moving containers with forklifts and cranes. Standard dock labor, oblivious to the war being fought in their shadows.
But six of them weren't human at all.
[ 48 BP ]. [ 52 BP ]. [ 65 BP ]. [ 71 BP ]. [ 58 BP ]. [ 76 BP ].
Lycans in human skin. They moved differently than the real workers—smoother, stronger, always positioning themselves near specific containers. Their pattern was obvious once you knew what to look for: they were handling cargo the humans never touched.
I pulled the camera from my coat—an old Nikon I'd stolen from a pawn shop—and began documenting.
Lycan one: dark hair, worker's coveralls, tattoo on neck. Supervising loading of container marked with Serbian shipping codes.
Lycan two: bald, enormous, barely fitting in his human form. Moving crates from unmarked truck to unmarked container.
The photographs accumulated. Ship names. Container numbers. Faces. Patterns.
Three hours of surveillance established the basics: Lycans controlled night shift loading for three specific piers. Cargo arrived by unmarked trucks, transferred to containers, shipped to destinations the manifests didn't specify. Human dock workers were paid to look elsewhere. Security guards were either bribed or replaced entirely.
But the cargo itself remained a mystery.
I descended from the warehouse roof, using Lycan claws to grip surfaces that would have been impossible before. The partial transformation was proving invaluable—enhanced senses for tracking, claws for climbing, all without the full shift that would broadcast my hybrid nature to anyone watching.
The chemical smell hit me at pier seven.
Sharp. Acrid. Medical, almost. My old surgeon's instincts cataloged the components: irradiated phosphors, silver particulates in aerosol form, biological compounds I couldn't immediately identify.
I followed the scent to a container being loaded onto a flatbed truck. The workers handling it wore gloves—not standard dock equipment. Their movements were careful, deliberate. Whatever was inside, they knew it was dangerous.
The truck departed at 3:47 AM. I followed on foot, using rooftops and fire escapes to maintain visual contact while staying beyond detection range.
Warehouse district. Industrial zone east of the river. The truck turned into a loading bay I couldn't observe from any accessible angle, and I lost it.
But I'd narrowed the area. Eight square blocks of abandoned factories and commercial buildings. Singe's laboratory was somewhere in there.
[ QUEST PROGRESS: UV AMMUNITION SOURCE - 40% ]
The second night was more productive.
Same pier. Same Lycans. Same cargo patterns. But a new arrival changed everything.
He emerged from a black sedan at 1:22 AM—thin, bespectacled, wearing a lab coat over civilian clothes. Blood Appraisal tagged him immediately:
[ SINGE - LYCAN SCIENTIST - 121 BP ]
[ WARNING: CANON CHARACTER DETECTED ]
[ NOTE: SINGE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HYBRID RESEARCH LEADING TO MICHAEL CORVIN'S TRANSFORMATION ]
I pressed myself flat against the rooftop, camera raised, heart pounding with something that wasn't quite fear. Singe. The scientist who would extract Michael's blood. The architect of Lucian's hybrid plan.
Standing two hundred meters away, supervising a shipment like a middle manager checking inventory.
The photographs came rapid-fire. His face. His sedan's license plate. The containers he inspected. The subordinates who deferred to him.
Then he stopped.
His head tilted. Nostrils flared. The motion was pure Lycan—scenting something on the wind that didn't belong.
"The partial transformation. He can smell the hybrid signature."
I retracted my claws instantly, but the damage might already be done. Singe scanned the rooftops, eyes tracking across warehouses and industrial buildings with predatory focus.
Ninety seconds. The longest ninety seconds of my existence.
Another Lycan called to him—something about cargo manifests requiring signature. Singe turned, distracted, and I used the moment to retreat.
Three buildings away before I risked looking back. The dock activity had resumed. Singe was examining paperwork, apparently satisfied that whatever he'd sensed wasn't an immediate threat.
Close. Too close.
The partial transformation was powerful, but it came with costs I hadn't fully anticipated. Lycan senses could detect hybrid signatures. Every time I extended those abilities, I was broadcasting my nature to anyone with the nose to recognize it.
"Need to be more careful. Or stronger. Preferably both."
The third night, I kept my distance. Observation only, no enhanced senses beyond the vampire baseline. Singe didn't appear. The standard Lycan workforce continued their routine. More photographs. More documentation.
The evidence was mounting. Locations, faces, shipping patterns. Enough to give Kraven everything he'd asked for.
But giving Kraven this information would trigger a coven assault on Lycan operations. Death Dealers would storm the warehouse district, potentially destroying Singe's laboratory before Michael Corvin ever reached it. The hybrid research—the key to everything—would be lost.
I needed Michael to transform first. Needed the hybrid blood to exist before I could claim it.
The timeline was fragile. Push too hard, and canon collapsed in the wrong direction.
[ CURRENT BP: 643/1000 ]
[ EVOLUTION SICKNESS COOLDOWN: 69 HOURS REMAINING ]
I returned to Ördögház as dawn approached, photographs secure in my coat, decisions weighing heavy.
Tomorrow, I'd report to Kraven. The question was: what would I tell him?
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