Marked by Monsters

Blood and Instinct

*11:47pm. Balete Night Market. Accounting Office.*

The office was quiet in the way that only happened after midnight, when the vendors had already paid and the only sounds left were the buzzing fan, the scratch of Shiloh’s pen against the logbook, and the distant music from a radio at the fish stall three aisles over.

Shiloh was counting cash from Stall 14, her hands moving automatically, her eyes scanning the receipts without really seeing them, because she was also listening to Maya’s voice note on her phone about the group project due Friday.

She had gotten used to the noise, to the smell of grilled meat and coffee and rain on tarp, to the way her body didn’t get tired anymore even after an 8-hour shift followed by classes.

She had gotten used to a lot of things.

What she had not gotten used to was the smell.

It hit her first, sharp and coppery, cutting through the coffee and the damp air like a knife.

Kuya Ben, who handled inventory for Warehouse 3 and who always came in late to drop off the daily report, had knocked over a box of canned goods and caught his palm on the edge of a dented can.

“s**t,” Kuya Ben hissed, holding his hand up. Blood was already running down his wrist, fast, too fast, and it was dripping onto the concrete floor in steady, loud drops.

Shiloh stood up so fast her chair scraped back.

Her heart was beating, but not in her chest. It was in her throat, in her ears, everywhere.

The smell filled the room and then the hallway and then her head, and suddenly she could hear the blood moving under Kuya Ben’s skin, she could hear his pulse, she could hear the way the wound was still opening.

“Are you okay?” Shiloh asked, and her voice sounded wrong, too low, too careful.

“Yeah, it’s fine, anak,” Kuya Ben said, waving his other hand. “Just a cut. Go get the first aid kit from—”

He didn’t finish, because Shiloh was already moving, but not toward the cabinet.

She took one step toward him.

Then another.

Her vision had gone sharp in a way that made the edges of everything look too clear, and the air tasted like metal, and her hands were shaking but not from fear.

Kuya Ben saw her face and froze. “Shiloh?”

Shiloh stopped herself. She dug her nails into her palm until it hurt, until the pain was louder than the smell, until she could breathe again.

“First aid kit,” she said, and her voice cracked. She turned and walked to the cabinet, pulled it out, handed him gauze without looking at his hand.

Her hands were still trembling when she sat back down.

Kuya Ben wrapped his hand himself, watching her the whole time. “You’re pale, anak. You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Shiloh lied.

She wasn’t fine. She could still smell it. Even after he left.

---

*12:14am. Calder Properties. 30th Floor Meeting Room.*

Dax was in the middle of a presentation about the Tanauan warehouse expansion when his phone vibrated once on the table.

He ignored it.

Then it vibrated again.

Then the air in the room changed.

Dax stopped talking mid-sentence.

Twelve executives stopped talking too, because Dax Calder never stopped talking unless something was wrong.

He looked down at his phone. One message from Lena:

*`Something’s off at the market. Accounting office. Come now.`*

Dax didn’t say anything. He just stood up, buttoned his coat, and walked out of the meeting without an explanation.

“Sir, the investors—” Marco started.

“They can wait,” Dax said.

In the elevator, his chest felt tight in a way it hadn’t in three years, and he couldn’t explain why, except that he knew, with the same instinct that had told him not to walk past the girl under the streetlight, that Shiloh was in trouble.

---

*12:22am. Balete Night Market.*

Dax found her in the accounting office, sitting perfectly still behind the desk, staring at her hands.

The smell of blood was still in the air, faint but there.

Shiloh didn’t look up when he came in.

“You’re bleeding,” Dax said, because there was a thin cut on her palm where she had dug her nails in too hard.

“It’s not mine,” Shiloh said. Her voice was flat. “Kuya Ben cut himself. On a can.”

Dax closed the door. “And?”

“And I couldn’t...” Shiloh trailed off. She finally looked at him, and her eyes were gray and wide and terrified in a way he hadn’t seen even that night three years ago. “I wanted to.”

Dax didn’t ask what she meant. He already knew.

He crouched in front of her desk, the way Silas had in the classroom, but he didn’t keep his distance. “Breathe,” Dax said. “With me.”

Shiloh did, shaky and uneven.

“You’re not a monster,” Dax said quietly. “You’re just hungry.”

“I’m not hungry,” Shiloh said immediately. “I eat. I had pandesal.”

“I don’t mean food,” Dax said.

Shiloh went still. “What do you mean?”

Dax studied her for a long time. The tremor in her hands. The way her pupils were too big. The way she was sitting like she was holding herself together with string.

“I mean that whatever you are,” Dax said, “it’s waking up. And if we don’t control it, it will control you.”

Shiloh laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. “What am I, Mr. Calder?”

Dax didn’t answer. Not yet.

Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small, wrapped pack of blood bags. The kind hospitals threw out. He set it on the desk between them.

“Eat this,” Dax said. “Before you do something you can’t take back.”

Shiloh stared at it like it was a snake. “I’m not—”

“You are,” Dax cut her off, but not unkindly. “And it’s okay. You just have to learn.”

For a long time, Shiloh didn’t move. Then, slowly, she picked up the pack with shaking hands.

She didn’t drink it. Not yet. But she didn’t push it away either.

---

*1:05am. Outside the office.*

Lena was waiting in the hall. “Is she—”

“She’s fine,” Dax said. “For now.”

Lena looked at him. “You knew.”

“I suspected,” Dax said. “Three years ago. Under the streetlight. She didn’t flinch when she saw the blood.”

Lena sighed. “What are we going to do?”

Dax looked back at the closed door, where Shiloh was still sitting alone with a blood pack in her hands and no one to tell her what came next.

“We’re going to teach her,” Dax said. “Before someone else does.”

---

*2:30am. Room 204. Balete University.*

Silas’s phone buzzed. Unknown number.

*`There was blood at the market tonight. She lost control.`*

Silas read the message twice, then deleted it.

He looked out his office window at the dark city, and he whispered, “It’s starting.”

He didn’t call his clan. Not yet.

He would wait. Until she was more afraid. Until she had no one else to go to.