Page 30 of Vows & Violence
“We need to move,” I mutter.
Ghost nods but doesn’t move.
I lean in close, lips near his ear. “Don’t let him in your head, Ghost. Vale lives for cracks. He’ll dig his fingers in and rip you out.” That gets him walking again.
We press through the bodies, cutting diagonally through a group of dancers painted in neon bones. Ghost’s eyes keep glancing around, checking rooftops, doorways, and the faces beneath every mask. I match his pace, heart ticking faster with every step.
MV’s breadcrumbs are getting bolder. Timed sightings. It’s like someone’s leading us through a scavenger hunt from hell. Or baiting us.
I wouldn’t put it past Vale to use MV’s network against us. To twist even our ghost in the machine into a weapon.
I keep my hand on my knife and my eyes on Ghost because right now, I’m not sure what’s hunting him more, Vale or whatever the Hollow Sons left inside him.
We reach the warehouse on Burgundy Street just as the fireworks start. Blue sparks scream overhead, drawing the crowd’s attention skyward, covering our approach.
MV’s last ping led us here. Burned-out signage and graffiti scrawled over rusting sheet metal. The side door’s been left slightly open, like someone wanted us to notice.
Ghost doesn’t speak, just slides in first, blade already in his hand. He moves like muscle memory, all silent steps and sharp eyes, but I see the tension coiled in his shoulders. He’s too alert. Too still. Like something inside him is bracing for impact.
I follow.
The warehouse is quiet. One strobe bulb overhead flickers like it’s struggling to stay alive. It casts everything in broken light. Creating shadows that twitch when they shouldn't. The air stinks of copper and something wrong. Something sour rotting sweet.
We find him ten steps in. The lieutenant. One of Vale’s lieutenants. At least… what’s left of him.
He’s been arranged like a puppet. His arms spread, slumped against the far wall. His chest’s been torn open, ribs crackedlike someone pried them apart with bare hands. A Hollow Sons mask has been shoved onto his face, but blood seeps through the cracks.
Ghost stares but doesn’t move. I scan the walls and freeze. It’s there, scrawled in thick, wet black across the concrete:
She rides with Death. He is already ours.
My pulse kicks hard in my throat. Whoever wrote it knew we were coming. Knew I’d be the one to read it.
“Ghost,” I say carefully. “Don’t look.”
But he’s already moving. His fingers brush the wall near the writing, like he needs to feel it’s real. And then his other hand goes to his chest, like something in him is tightening, squeezing. His breaths come faster, shallower. Not panic, but something else. Recognition.
“Blood for the hollow,” he mutters.
“What?” I step between him and the wall. “Ghost, talk to me.”
His eyes gaze up, and I hate what I see. They’re hunted, glassy, like he’s not fully here anymore. His voice comes low, raw. “I heard that phrase before. When I was still a cop. Some off-the-books ops tied to psych trials. They shut it down after one of ours shot his own partner mid-raid.”
My stomach turns. “Are you telling me…”
“I don’t know,” he cuts me off. “But something’s off. I keep seeing people who aren’t there. Hearing things I haven’t heard in years.”
I take his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “You’re here. With me. Right now. Whatever this is, we fight it together.”
His jaw tightens, but he nods. Only then do I let go, but I don’t turn my back. Because that message wasn’t just for me. It was for him, too. A warning. Or a claim.
And I don’t know what scares me more. The monsters we’re hunting, or the idea that they’ve already carved a piece of him out and made it theirs.
We make it back to the safe house just before dawn. No one speaks much.
Poison’s pacing in the kitchen, muttering to Kitty. Gypsy’s pulling up blueprints on MV’s tablet, trying to make sense of the breadcrumb trail we followed to a mutilated corpse and a message that felt more like a curse. Viper’s smoking by the window, her second cigarette since we got back.
And Ghost? Ghost just… disappears into the corner of the living room, staring at nothing.
