Page 53 of The Mafia Bloodline
“Then he has another source,” I muttered.
Draugr had been quiet through it all, standing near the edge of the pier, eyes distant, unfocused in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Draugr,” Roman said carefully. “What do you see?”
He didn’t answer at first. Then, slowly, his head turned, eyes glowing faintly with that eerie silver light.
“I saw Caesar,” he said, voice low and heavy. “And Malakai. But not here. Later. He’s shaking hands with someone… older. Not human. I can’t see the face, but the aura…” He shuddered. “It’s vampire. Ancient. Someone powerful.”
“Who?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But the moment I saw it, I felt… dread. This man, whoever he is, isn’t Caesar’s pawn. Caesar is his.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Roman stepped closer, his expression grim. “Then we’re not just at war with Caesar and his demons anymore. There’s something bigger behind this.”
Lucien holstered his weapon, his tone measured but cold. “Then we find him. We find them both.”
Viking cracked his neck, still trembling from his berserker rage. “And when we do, I’ll tear them apart myself.”
I glanced out over the water, the moonlight glinting on the waves, the faint scent of sulphur still lingering in the air.
Caesar was gone. Malakai had escaped. And as I wiped the blood from my blade, one thought burned through me: No one touches my family. No one.
Because whatever darkness waited ahead, I’d face it, fangs bared, claws ready with Runa and our unborn child safe behind me.
Even if it meant burning the whole damn world to ash.
I turned, shoulders coiled, and forced my way back into the warehouse throat-deep in smoke and char. The docks smelled of iron and oil and something fouler, the sulphur bite of demon ash. The fight had passed through here like a storm: splintered pallets, shredded tarps, the blackened puddles where demon blood had mixed with seawater and settled into a greasy film.
Bodies lay half-buried under debris, some human, some not. Demon-warped corpses still twisted with a grotesque afterlife; their mouths open in permanent gurgles. A few human shapes had the glassy stare of those who’d been used then discarded, the telltale black veining that spoke of possession crawling under the skin.
My boots crunched over the mess. Every step tightened the knot in my gut. Malakai’s words…her father is here…had been a whip across a wound that had not finished closing.
I moved upstairs on instinct, one eye on a darkened office with a locked steel door. The handle was warm. Someone had been here not long ago. I paused as I could feel the echo of a presence through the boards, sliding the lock with a small pry. The door groaned, and the smell hit me first: stale sweat, the copper tang of old bites, and underneath everything the faint, unmistakable rot of demon residue.
He was huddled in the corner, knees pulled to his chest, skin the pasty hue of someone who'd been starved of light and hope. At first glance he might have been any broken man pulled from a gutter, dirt in the creases of his palms, hair matted to his scalp.Then I saw the smaller things: the track marks where he’d been injected with sedatives or something similar, scabbed ragged lines across his wrists from manacles, the vamp-tooth punctures along his forearm and neck, old and newer both. And the worst part, the black veins crawling up his temple, the dull, glassy glare of eyes that did not entirely register the world.
My fingers curled on the doorframe. I knew that face.
“Colm,” I said before the cold could quiet my tongue. It was a name I had tried not to think of, Runa’s father. That realization landed in me like a punch. He was alive. He was here. And he wasn’t a man anymore.
He looked up at the sound of my voice, and there was a moment of recognition, a flash that could have been hope. Then something else surfaced, the animal panic of someone half-possessed, tracking the scent of a hunter even in the corner’s gloom. He tried to rise and fell back with a wet, inelegant sob. When he spoke, it wasn’t words but an animal noise, a syllable torn into pieces. Then, very slowly, he made a shape of speech: “Runa… Runa?”
My chest tightened until everything blurred. Fury flared, bright and cruel and then, beneath that, a different, colder thing, the knowledge that telling Runa would ruin her. She was pregnant. She had to be kept calm, kept whole. The thought of her learning her father had become this…possessed, bitten, a walking ruin flattened me with guilt.
Kill him. That was the first, naked thought, the efficient, merciful cure for a corrupted soul. End the suffering, end the risk. It would spare Runa the slow, jagged grief of watching a man decay into a monster.
My hand hovered. The blade at my hip felt suddenly heavier than usual.
But I had seen things before. Demons weren’t always finished just because you slit a throat. Some of them latched on like parasites to the mind and left marks that bled into bloodlines. Those bite marks along Colm’s neck meant vampires had been here too, either saviours who tried and failed, or monsters who’d done worse. There were possibilities I couldn’t afford to throw away. And then there was the selfish, stupid, human thing that Runa had only one parent left. Even broken and half-taken, the idea of snuffing him out without trying… I couldn’t make myself do it. I wouldn’t do that to her.
I closed the door a breath and knelt, slow, palms flat on my knees so I wouldn’t startle him. Up close his skin smelled of decay and something metallic, but there was also the faint familiar note of tobacco, of the older, simpler life Runa had described, the small, ordinary things that make someone real.
“Colm,” I said again, quieter this time. “I’m Volken. You didn’t die. You’ll…” My voice broke.
He laughed, a thin, rattling sound, and reached blindly. His fingers pawed the air and found my wrist. They were cold and wet. His grip closed like a vice and he muttered, half-sentence, half-prayer: “They took… said it’s for money… can’t… can’t…”
