The Basement Wolf

Chapter 26. Silence Before Blood

The day had worn itself thin, the sky stretched in dull gray folds over the street. Sandra’s hand curled around the paper bag, its weight a small, stubborn anchor against the storm spinning inside her head. Beside her, Liam walked with a stride too measured for ten years, like childhood had been hammered out of him and replaced with steel too brittle to last.

She’d tried words at first—light things, casual, the kind mothers toss into the air to coax out laughter. But he’d shrugged them off like cold rain. So now they moved in silence, two ghosts dragging shadows across cracked pavement.

Until he spoke. Quiet. Abrupt.

“I like chocolate better than vanilla,” he said, staring at the sidewalk like the words embarrassed him.

Sandra blinked, her throat catching on the ordinary. She managed a smile, small and careful, and glanced down at him. “Yeah? I guessed that when you picked the biggest chocolate cone in the freezer.”

A shrug. A breath that almost shaped a smile. “Vanilla’s boring. Chocolate feels…louder.”

Sandra’s chest tightened in ways words couldn’t map. She nodded. “Good thing I bought two. In case one tries to escape.”

That earned her the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not joy, not yet. But something unbroken flickered there.

They walked on. The bag rustled, bottles clinking like muffled bells. After a block, he spoke again, softer, like the words might vanish if he said them too loud. “I like those old movies… the black-and-white ones. The detective guys. They always know stuff.”

Sandra tilted her head, her pulse warming to the sound of him opening. “Like the ones where everyone wears hats and smokes too much?”

“Yeah,” he said, and for a second his eyes—those river-glass eyes—lit from inside. “They don’t panic. Even when everything’s…bad.”

Sandra’s throat closed. She swallowed it down and asked, “What about toys? Still like building stuff?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Robots. The kind that look human but aren’t. They’re stronger.”

Her grip on the bag tightened. Stronger. Because weakness had been punished in his world. Because Stefan had carved that lesson into bone. She bit back the ache and said lightly, “Maybe we’ll build one together. A robot so loud it scares the boring right out of vanilla.”

Liam snorted—a tiny sound, a spark. She clung to it like a lifeline.

By the time the safe house came into view—a squat shadow of brick and peeling paint—the air had thickened. Not with rain. With something else. Wrongness slinking along her nerves, sharp as glass dust. Sandra slowed. Her breath drew tight.

“Inside,” she murmured, almost to herself. Then louder, steady: “Stay close.”

Liam’s eyes cut to her face, reading what she didn’t say. He obeyed, his small hand slipping into hers. It felt like holding the last candle in a collapsing tunnel.

They reached the door. It was ajar by an inch.

Sandra’s pulse punched her ribs. She set the bag down soundlessly, her fingers brushing the knife she kept buried in her coat lining. A whisper of steel steadied her palm. She nudged the door wider with her foot.

And smelled it.

Blood. Thick. Metallic. Not the kind you scrape on childhood knees—the kind that means endings.

“Mom?” Liam’s whisper was a thread.

“Quiet,” she breathed, easing him behind her as they slipped inside.

The hallway was dim, the bulb overhead swinging slow, like it had watched and given up. Her boots found scuffs on the floor—marks of struggle etched into dust. The air thrummed with absence, with the echo of violence that hadn’t cooled yet.

She rounded the corner and the world stopped.

Roy lay sprawled near the table, his body bent wrong, his chest a map of red. Eyes half-open, staring at something that wasn’t here anymore. His knife still clutched in one rigid hand, as if defiance could be embalmed in muscle.

Sandra’s breath cracked. The knife in her grip trembled once, then stilled. She moved on instinct—pivoting, scanning for shadows that breathed. Nothing but wreckage. Nothing but him.

“Mom—” Liam started, voice breaking like thin ice.

She spun, dropped to one knee, and crushed him to her chest before the horror could root too deep. His heartbeat jackhammered against her ribs. She bent her mouth to his hair and lied through her teeth: “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

But the air tasted like iron and failure, and her fingers were shaking so hard they could barely hold him.

Then a voice, low and urgent, sliced the silence.

“Move.”

Sandra whipped around, blade flashing, until her eyes caught his—Bradley—standing in the doorway, rain carving rivers down his jacket, breath clouding like smoke.

“Brad—what—” Her words tangled, wild.

“No time,” he said, crossing the room in two strides. His face was carved from stormlight, his eyes all edges. “Take him. Go to the car. Now.”

Sandra’s arms cinched tighter around Liam. “Roy—” Her gaze jerked to the body on the floor, her throat burning acid.

Bradley’s jaw locked, something raw flickering there before he shuttered it. “I know,” he said, voice a gravel scrape. “I’ll handle it. You just move.”

Sandra wanted to fight him, to demand why, to pour every scream clawing her throat into his chest. But Liam trembled against her, and the copper stench was everywhere, and somewhere deep she knew—if Bradley said run, you ran.

She nodded once. Hard. Then bolted.

The night hit them like a fist—wind shoving rain sideways, shadows rippling with menace. Sandra clutched Liam and ran, her breath ragged, her boots drumming panic against the pavement. The car crouched at the curb like a waiting beast, black and slick. She yanked the back door open, shoved Liam inside, slid after him.

“Buckle,” she rasped, fingers fumbling with straps until the click sounded like salvation. “Don’t move. Don’t—”

A shape filled the driver’s seat—Bradley, rain dripping from his hair, eyes twin storms. The engine snarled awake under his hands. Tires spat water, flinging them into the dark.

Sandra twisted, staring through the blur of glass at the house receding like a bad memory. Her chest hitched, a sob strangled silent between her teeth. Beside her, Liam stared at nothing, his small hands fists in his lap. The bag of groceries lay on the floor, bleeding milk through torn paper.

Few moments before, inside the house, the air cooled around the ruin. Bradley stood alone for one breath too long, looking down at Roy—the old wolf who’d spent years guarding doors no one thanked him for. Bradley’s throat locked. He crouched, fingers brushing the stiffened grip of the knife Roy had died clutching.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice hoarse with things unsaid. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

The silence gave him no pardon. Only the smell of blood and the tick of cooling metal answered.

He laid the knife gently by Roy’s side, a soldier’s last courtesy. Then he rose, his jaw iron, and followed the wet tracks to the car waiting in the storm.