Page 92 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts

“Slow down!” Felix shouted. “The last thing we need is a police chase right now!”

I eased off, my speed dropping to a more reasonable hundred, though every instinct screamed at me to push harder, faster.

“They’ve left the main road.” Priya said. “Tracking them onto… some kind of side route. Few minutes ahead of you.” A pause. “It’s a small track. Nothing but disused buildings for miles.”

Tyres crunched onto gravel as I followed their path. Shadows stretched across the narrow track, branches scraping against the pristine paintwork.

“Noctule.” Priya’s voice cut through the darkness, stern and commanding. “Youneedto slow down now, else you’ll kill yourself and you’ll be no help to him at all.”

I barely registered her warning, my focus narrowing on the path ahead. “Am I close? Where is he?!”

“There’s no CCTV here.” Felix’s typing grew more frantic. “We’re off grid. But there’s only one road. Keep going.”

My headlights carved through the darkness, illuminating patches of overgrown track. Then—something massive lurched into the beam of light. That impossible creature again. The hyena stood in the middle of the road, its muscled shoulders hunched, yellow eyes blazing in my headlights. I slammed on the brakes instinctively, the car fishtailing slightly before I regained control.

“Seb?” Priya’s voice crackled with concern. “What happened?”

That same creature I’d seen before—a hyena in London, of all things. Each appearance heralding disaster. Was it… warning me? Following me? But there wasn’t time to dwell on such impossibilities now.

My hands clenched the wheel as we bounced over potholes and debris. Then—there—a flash of white metal in the distance.

The van.

I zoomed towards it, closing the distance between us. The van’s taillights burned like prey in my vision, growing larger with each passing second.

Twenty metres. Ten. Five.

The distance between us shrank, my entire world narrowing to that white van. I barely registered Felix’s voice in my ear, or Priya’s continued warnings. Nothing mattered except closing those final metres.

Then my foot hovered over the accelerator as I calculated distances, angles, risks. Flynn was in there. I couldn’t simply charge up and ram it from behind.

“Boss? What’s the plan?”

I fumbled with the sleek dashboard, my fingers sliding uselessly across the glossy touchscreen. Black glass until touched, and even then, the icons made no sense.Bloody modern cars.

“Felix,” I growled, “where are the damn lights?”

“Left panel, boss. Swipe down, then right. The little sun icon—no, not that one. The other one. There you go.”

Finally, the Mercedes-Benz’s LED array blazed to life. State-of-the-art. It could probably illuminate half a football field.

“Peacock.” My voice was tight. “I was thinking… The deadwalkers. Their eyes… How sensitive are they?”

“Possibly extremely. Their retinas are likely partially decomposed, leaving the optic nerves exposed. Why— Oh! Do it!”

I slammed the high beams on full. The LED array blazed like artificial daylight, flooding the narrow track with searing white brilliance.

The van swerved violently. Its wheels caught the muddy verge where the track dropped away sharply. For a stretched moment, it teetered—

Momentum took over.

Metal screamed as the van tipped.

I slammed on the brakes, tyres fighting for purchase on the uneven surface.

The world slowed to a crawl as the van rolled, once, twice, sliding sideways across the soggy track in a shower of mud and gravel.

“Flynn!” The name tore from my throat.

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