Chapter Six: Teeth in the Dark
731 Words
The wind shifted again—wrong this time. Not just a breeze, but something with weight. With temperature. With intention.
Waiya felt it slide beneath her coat like a cold hand, tracing her spine with ice-wrapped warning. The air thickened, humming low, like the city itself was holding back a scream.
Justin’s head tilted, nostrils flaring. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Something primal in him had already recognized it.
“You feel that?” she whispered.
Silence.
Across the broken courtyard, the shadows near the abandoned train station began to warp. They stretched unnaturally, reaching across brick and concrete like fingers searching for something that didn’t belong to them. The rusted lion statue behind Justin released a sound—an old groan from stone that should never move. The magic in the air sharpened, turning blade-thin.
Then the streetlights blew.
Every single one.
One after another—pop… pop… pop—plunging the block into a thick black cut only by moonlight and fear.
Justin moved first.
“Waiya,” he said, voice low, dangerous, utterly calm. “Whatever’s coming—don’t cast. Just run if I tell you to.”
That lit fire under her ribs. “Don’t cast? Who the hell you think—”
She didn’t finish.
Because the thing stepped out of the wall.
It peeled itself from brick and shadow, all bones and bark and smoke. Its eyes glowed—a deep coal red, burning from some hollow skull never meant for this world. Its limbs bent the wrong way, as if it hadn’t learned how to wear flesh. It flickered through forms—half demon, half memory, half nightmare of something that used to be human.
“s**t,” Justin muttered.
His hand was already under his coat, drawing a blade—curved, etched with runes that pulsed an ancient blue. Not church magic. Not light magic. Root magic. Old-world and unforgiving.
The creature screamed.
The concrete trembled. Windows in boarded buildings shivered in their frames. Waiya felt the cry in her bones.
She dropped into stance, fingers brushing the protective charm at her neck, the sigil she’d carved at dawn still warm against her skin.
The creature turned—locked on her.
Its snarl was recognition.
“I think it knows me,” she breathed.
Justin stepped in front of her, blade raised.
“I know it does.”
The thing lunged.
Detroit became a battlefield.
Justin didn’t move like a man. He moved like someone who’d fought this kind of nightmare before. No panic. No hesitation. Every strike was precise, brutal. When it swiped with claws made of smoke and memory, he slipped beneath it, coming up behind, blade slashing through half-formed flesh.
Waiya started her chant—low, steady, summoning the sigils inked into her skin. The lines on her forearm ignited, glowing faintly as she cast a shield, hurling it between them and the creature.
It slowed the thing.
But it did not stop it.
Justin cursed. “We can’t hold it here. Not in the open.”
“You got a plan?”
He didn’t answer with words.
He grabbed her wrist.
“I got a key.”
The creature roared—furious that its prey was fleeing.
They ran.
Boots hit pavement. Breath tore in their lungs. Magic cracked behind them, lighting the dark in violent flashes. The ground shuddered.
Justin dragged her around a corner, through a rusted iron door in a building that hadn’t been alive in decades. He yanked her through and slammed it shut. It didn’t click.
It sealed.
Inside—stillness. Darkness. Safety, for now.
Waiya pressed her back to the cold wall, chest heaving, sage smoke still clinging to her coat.
Justin watched her in the dim, searching her face like he was checking for cracks.
She met his eyes.
“You always fight demons on a Tuesday night?”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Only when they know your name.”
She blinked. “Mine or yours?”
His gaze darkened.
“Both.”
Silence fell—not awkward. Heavy. Binding.
She slid down the wall, sat on the floor like she intended to hear him out.
“…This your place?”
He gave one slow nod.
She set her satchel down between them.
“Alright,” she said quietly.
“Guess I’m listening now.”
- Writer
