Page 8 of Thane's Demon
4
THE JOB THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
The moment Xue placed the file in my hand, a faint pull I couldn’t explain tugged at my mind. It was as if the thin paper carried a direction rather than information. Even as I moved through the club, ignoring the men who shifted away from me like I was a storm about to hit, my grip tightened around it without conscious thought.
The demon paced beneath my skin, muttering restlessly, as if it sensed something ahead, something waiting for us in the dark that I couldn’t yet see. The bass from the dance floor throbbed through the walls in steady pulses, each vibration crawling along my spine until it felt like the music itself was urging me forward. Quietly warning me that whatever this job was, it would lead me somewhere I could not turn back from.
By the time I reached the alley behind the club, the neon from Nanjing Road spilled across the slick pavement in fractured ribbons of color. Blues and reds twisted into shapes that looked half alive under the sheen of recent rain.
I released a sigh and opened the folder Xue had given me.
I flipped the cover back slowly, tension coiling through my shoulders when I saw the first image. The target was nothingspecial at first glance. A middle-aged man with thinning hair and a suit too expensive for his face. Along with the dead, cruel eyes of someone who had long ago learned to enjoy the suffering of others. His name meant nothing. His history was predictable. A trafficker. A broker in fear. A parasite feeding on the shadows beneath Shanghai’s glittering sky.
A typical job.
One Xue gave to me when he needed someone erased without questions or noise. Another person to disappear. But then my eyes dropped to the schedule typed beneath the image, neat and precise, and everything inside me stilled with a suddenness that chilled me.
Something about the time.
Something about the location.
Something about the way the letters pressed together on the page.
A tightening sensation crawled through my chest, dragging breath from my lungs. My demon surged so sharply I had to grip the edge of a dumpster, its voice rising in a hiss that scraped the base of my skull.
‘Close.
Near.
The path is shifting.
Follow it.’
I reread the location twice, three times. The same sense of inevitability pressed against me, heavy and suffocating. It wasn’t the target. It wasn’t the job. It was the feeling gnawing at the edge of my thoughts. A whisper that the meeting would intersect with something I was not meant to ignore.
The demon pressed harder at my ribs, claws scraping bone, urging me forward with a force that rattled my breath.
‘Go.
Move.
Now.’
I snapped the file closed, slipping it into my jacket and swallowed the hot rush of unease that shot through me. Not fear. Not for myself. Something else. Something I couldn’t identify, which only made it worse.
This job felt wrong. Not because of the man I was sent to kill. Not because of Xue.
But because of the timing.
Because of the direction it pointed me toward.
As if fate had begun to move its pieces.
I made my way back to my apartment, the weight of the file growing heavier with each step. My mind kept drifting back to Dominic, to the way he had stood in my space as if he had any right to. As if he hadn’t been the one to curse me with the existence I was forced to endure. His words echoed in stubborn loops.
Peace for your demon.
Trust me… my son.
