The Purifiers Watch
274 Words
Three men sat in a parked car at the edge of Ashenveil, watching Mara's house through equipment that had no business existing in a town this small.
They were Purifiers — hunters who had spent careers tracking supernatural anomalies and eliminating them before they could destabilize the careful, invisible balance most humans never noticed they were living inside. Their leader, a sharp-eyed woman named Reyes, studied the readout on her tablet with the focused calm of someone who had done this many times before.
"Signal's getting stronger," she said. "Whatever she is, she's not suppressing it anymore."
"Wolf tracker and a vampire both confirmed on scene multiple times this week," the younger man beside her added, scrolling through surveillance notes. "She's not hiding from either side. That's unusual for a Duskborn."
"Unusual is dangerous," Reyes said. "The last one we tracked ended a war by accident. Imagine what one does on purpose."
The third man, older and quieter than the others, finally spoke. "Orders?"
Reyes considered the house for a long moment — the dying roses visible even from this distance, the curtains drawn exactly the way generations of Ashenveil children had been taught.
"Containment first," she said. "If containment fails—"
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
The younger man checked the silver-lined equipment in the trunk one more time, methodical and practiced.
Inside the house, completely unaware, Mara sat at her kitchen table holding her grandmother's letter, trying to decide which side of an ancient war she could possibly trust.
She had no idea a third side was already watching, and had already made its decision about her.
- Writer
