Bloodline

The Smell Of Kin

Damien didn’t wait for nightfall.

He wrapped his leg in fresh bandages, the cloth already damp with something darker than blood. His hands didn’t shake. They never did when it mattered. He loaded two pistols with silver rounds, each bullet etched with the same symbols his grandmother used to carve into candle wax. Last, he swallowed a handful of black-market suppressants he kept for emergencies.

The pills burned going down like liquid fire. Good. Anything to slow the thing trying to claw its way out of his chest.

It started three nights ago. A dream that wasn’t a dream. Teeth. A howl that sounded like his own voice. He woke with scratches down his ribs and a hunger that water couldn’t fix. The suppressants bought him hours. Maybe a day. They never bought him peace.

The address Aunt Ruth had texted him led to a condemned apartment building on the far edge of the Hollow District, where the city gave up and the river turned toxic. PHEDC didn’t bother with streetlights here. The air smelled like rust, stagnant water, and something sour underneath it all.

Graffiti covered the walls in symbols that looked almost like the ones in his grandmother’s journal — crude warnings, or maybe invitations. A circle with three slashes. An eye inside a wolf’s jaw. He’d traced those same marks as a kid, thinking they were stories. Now he wasn’t so sure.

He limped up six flights of stairs, the railing crumbling under his palm. Each step groaned like the building had lungs. The suppressants made his vision swim at the edges, but they kept the beast quiet. For now.

On the third floor, a child’s doll lay face-down in a puddle. Its button eyes were gone. On the fifth, the graffiti changed. Fewer warnings. More invitations. Arrows pointing up.

Door 4B on the sixth floor stood ajar.

He paused.

That’s when he caught it.

A smell.

Not rot. Not river. Blood, yes. But under it, wet fur. Copper. Home.

Kin.

The word hit him harder than the pills. His grandmother used it only once, the night she disappeared. “When you smell kin, Damien, you run. Or you kill. There’s no middle.”

His leg throbbed. The thing in his chest scraped against bone, eager. The silver in his pistols felt cold, familiar.

He pushed the door open with the barrel of his gun.

The apartment was empty. Except for the circle on the floor. Fresh. Still wet. And in the center, a jacket he recognized.

Aunt Ruth’s.

The suppressants couldn’t stop the growl that tore out of his throat.